Sometimes in his mind it worked for Fidelis to stand on the black cover and hold the book shut underneath the same hobnailed boots he had worn then. He tried closing the book, now, concentrating until he sweat. Muck oozed up around his boots. He smelled shit and death. He’d been cold-blooded, invincible, bringing down the enemy’s personal, vengeful fire upon himself and everyone around him. No wonder the other men had hated him and feared him, except Johannes.
“Are you all right?” Delphine was shaken. He knew she had told him something that she felt was terribly important, but he didn’t remember much of what she’d said. He must divert her. He took her face in his hands and concentrated fiercely upon her features.
“Es macht nichts,” he said, speaking German in the hope that Delphine would interpret what he said in the way most comforting to her. Then he stilled his heart, his breath, his thoughts, and leaned into her until his heart knocked hard and his breath tore through his lungs and thoughts turned into shifting colors that ripped softly into many pieces and rained down all around them as ordinary light.
WALKING AWAY FROM the little house much later, in the middle of the night, through the brilliant blue air, Fidelis knew that something had shifted. Up and down the center of his body he could feel the movement of his blood for the first time, as though agitated molecules boiled slowly top to bottom. Several times, as though drunk, he nearly lost his footing. The strange inclination took him at one point to shout aloud, and he did, in the booming dark wind, the cropped black wheat stubble stretching for miles around him. New wheat coming up. There was nothing to throw back his voice, no echo, only blurred horizon. He imagined that perhaps the sound traveled all the way around the world, the faded vowels bouncing back on his shoulders before he moved, and he laughed. It was the shout, the sound, that told him later as he entered the lights of the town’s outskirts and drew near to his own door, what had happened to him. He’d lost his stillness, his capacity for utter cessation, the talent he’d once possessed for slowing his heart and drawing only the slightest breath. That was disarranged. He couldn’t do it anymore. That was finished. And yet it didn’t matter, he thought, there was no need anymore for that sort of quiet, that stillness, that absence, to survive.
THE WALLS OF THE bedroom Fidelis had shared with Eva were a pale maple-colored plaster. After Eva died, Tante had taken her clothes to distribute among the needy. She had claimed Eva’s porcelain figurines, her jewelry, and packed away what was worthless, too personal, or even sinister: Eva’s tortoiseshell combs, letters from her family, a few books interleaved with personal notes, holy cards of angels, virgins, saints, and Catholic martyrs. After it was cleared out, Fidelis had slept in the bedroom. But it was clear that he had just endured the space, used it only because there was nowhere else to sleep. He’d gone unconscious there and then awakened with little interest in his surroundings. The one deep, long window’s sill was piled with motor parts, beer bottles, broken cups, full ashtrays, and dead plants.
One day when things at the shop were slow, Delphine cleaned out the room. She divided the junk into piles that she would deposit in proper places or discard. There were still a few things of Eva’s — a jacket, a forgotten shoe, some powder and a drawer of underslips that she packed carefully away into a cardboard carton. Fidelis had put the old bed he’d shared with Eva in the boys’ room and bought a new one, in a plainer style, and a dresser to match it, both stained a deep cherry red-brown. Delphine had bought a bedcover for the bed, and now she spread it across. It was woven with intense red and purple threads, deep and beautiful colors. She stood back, looked at the bed glowing in the room. She rubbed almond oil into the wood of the new dresser and polished the mirror. When she met her own eyes in the mirror, though, she had to stop and sit down on the side of the bed. She was breathing quickly, in a panic, not at all from exertion. Her heart surged and her chest tightened. Did she love Fidelis too much or did she love him at all? Her eyes looked hollow with greed. No good would come of it. She had no control over what he could do to her and where it would end. And what if he should die someday — that would be the limit! Her throat burned. Tears ached behind her eyes. She put her face into her hands and breathed the blackness behind her palms. When she lifted her face, she thought she might tell him that they should not have married. She could still go away. The thought loosened the tightness in her chest and she breathed more easily. Yes, she could walk straight out of his life! But all she did was walk out of the bedroom into a slightly longer hallway, and then down that hall toward the shop.
As she walked the brown and white tiles, toward the door of stained pine that divided the shop from the rest of the house, she had the odd sense that the walls had squeezed slightly in and the passageway was longer than she remembered. All along the walls the stuff of running a business was hung on iron hooks or stuffed in cupboards. Stained aprons, towels, wooden bins of screws and bolts and extra nails. Tools for fixing the coolers and building new shelves. Catalogues and flyers and price lists. Samples and trial labels. Invoice forms and rolls of waxed paper. Halfway down the corridor, in the dimmest part of the hall, she stopped and took a deep breath of air scented with dried blood and old paper. Spices, hair oil, fresh milk, clean floor. It was all there. She breathed the peace of the order she’d achieved. A powerful wave of pleasure filled her. And then the customer bell rang out front, and she walked swiftly forward to take her place behind the counter.
THE SCHMIDTS had already changed their name to Smith and the Buchers were now Mr. and Mrs. Book. The Germans hung American flags by their doorways or in their windows, and they spoke as much English as they knew. Into the joking fellowship of the singers there entered an uneasiness. The men were out back of Fidelis’s kitchen, sitting around a rough wood table on the pounded grass underneath the clothesline. A galvanized tin washtub held ice and cold beer. A shallow barrel held warm. Fidelis thought cold beer was bad for the stomach, and he drank his only after the sun had thoroughly caressed the bottle. He opened one bottle now as he listened. Chester Zumbrugge was concerned that the singing in German might be construed as treasonous activity.
“Not that it could be considered a real crime. Not that we’d be prosecuted! However, I think we’ve got town sentiment to consider.”
“Those Krauts beat the beans out of the damn Polacks,” said Newhall. “I don’t care what you say, they’re a war machine.”
“They’re a bunch of damn butchers,” said Fidelis, and the others laughed. Fidelis tried to crack a walnut between his fingers, but his fingers slipped. He tried three times before he shelled the nut and tossed the meat into his mouth. He cracked another walnut, this time with a swift crunch of his fingers. But he said nothing else. Pete Kozka walked into the yard.
“Look who’s here!” said Pouty. He handed Kozka a beer with one hand and shook Kozka’s hand with the other. Sal Birdy slapped him on the back. Newhall nodded happily, and pulled a chair out. They’d lost Chavers, and then Sheriff Hock. Not that long ago Roy Watzka. Their number was dwindling and it was good when one of their old company appeared. The men cleared their throats, found their pitch, smoothed their way into the songs with beer. They leaned toward one another in concentration and let the music carry them.
I was standing by my window in the early morning
Feeling no worry and feeling no care
I greeted the postman who smiled with no warning