T. Bunn - Winner Take All

Reiner felt his heart wrenched by the baby’s occasional whimpers. His own father had remained a closet Nazi all his life, his mother a hapless Rheinlander hausfrau who relied on her husband for all strength and every opinion. One of the things Reiner liked most about his own wife was her fervent desire never to have children. Yet there was no mistaking the gentle pull this child exerted. Only Erin remained obstinately aloof.

South of Bonn, Erin instructed him to exit off the A61 and head west toward nowhere. Reiner cast her a quick glance and said, “Are you sure?”

Erin said nothing. She had aged twenty years that morning, and carried her silence with the determined grimness of one being fitted for a future shroud.

“I have lived in the Rheinland-Palatinate all my life,” Reiner said, steering his way up into the forest and the sky. “And I have successfully managed to avoid ever entering the Eifel.”

“Then you were very lucky indeed.”

“You lived here?”

“Nine measureless, miserable years.”

Between the Mosel and Ahr rivers, stretching from Koblenz westward to the four-country juncture of Luxembourg, Germany, Holland, and Belgium, lay the Eifel. Time-softened hills rose and fell in forested waves, drawing the visitor into a hoary land which mocked Germany’s high-impact industrial might. From Aachen southward the region was little visited, save for morel hunters and local hikers. Even the road signs, such as they were, were inscribed in the old cursive script. But Erin’s directions remained bitterly constant.

“Why did your parents choose to live here?”

“Did I say my family? Did I mention them at all?”

“Erin, softly please, the baby.”

“My mother never came here. Not one time.” She was silent so long Reiner assumed it was all he would learn of her past. Which was already more than she had ever said before. “My mother was a true Prussian blueblood. My father was Belgian. They divorced before I was born. I never met him. He was rich, an industrialist. Textiles, I believe she once said. When he left, she kept the money, which was all she wanted from him. She hated me.”

“I doubt very much-”

“She loathed the sight of me.” Erin used both hands to sweep her hair back, tilting her head in the gesture he had come to know so well, dismissing everything about the world she did not find to her liking. “Summers we moved to Antibes. Every September when my mother returned to Germany I was sent off to a horrible school in the middle of a forest. The driver brought me down. He never spoke. I hated him. I hated every one of them, my mother and all her little playmates. But I hated the convent most of all.”

A few kilometers past the Belgian border, they entered a valley with a lake at either end. The middle portion was well-tended pasture, with horses gamboling in the knee-high grass. Wildflowers shimmered in an earthbound rainbow ballet under the light summer breeze. The air was fresh and full of country smells. The road was rough and poorly kept. The tires scrambled around a tight corner and entered through a high stone wall. Beyond, the tree-lined drive seemed endless. Erin’s hands were gripped fiercely in her lap as they halted before a second stone wall. Somewhere in the distance a church bell rang a doleful welcome or dismissal, he could not tell which.

“A convent,” Reiner murmured. “So the rumors are true.”

Erin was already climbing from the car. “Come with me,” she said curtly. “Bring the child.”

They crossed a curved stone bridge over a stillwater moat. Birdsong sounded loud and raucous. The wind was a mysterious undertone that only accented the quiet.

Reiner felt pressured from all sides by the city’s absence. “Horrid,” he declared. “Utterly hideous.”

Erin remained upon the stone bridge, staring eastward to where the high wall bowed inward to permit a tiny garden. Watched over by a pair of moat-fed willows were three flower-bedecked graves. “You can’t imagine.”

“Why are we here, Erin?”

She marched past him to where a bellpull dangled. She wrenched it down, once, twice, three times, pulling so hard the cord almost touched the earth. From within the bell sounded strident.

A narrow portal set within the massive front doors opened to reveal an elderly nun in formal black habit. “Yes?”

“We are here to see the Mother Superior.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“The Mother Superior,” Erin declared, “will see us.”

Something in her tone did not sit well with the nun. “Your name?”

“Erin Brandt.”

“One moment.”

But before the nun could shut the door, Erin was already pushing through. “We will wait inside.”

“But you are not-”

“Will you tell the Mother Superior we are here? Or shall I?”

Within the compound, the silence was only more intense. The nuns Reiner could see moved without disturbing the serenity, as though they had already been swallowed and lost. He wanted to shout, rage, scream, burn. Anything to add a bit of comforting chaos.

By the time the sister returned, Reiner’s skin felt attacked by a million roaches, all crawling and scrambling with a shared urge to flee. The nun gave him a look that suggested she knew exactly what he was thinking, but all she said was, “This way.”

“I know precisely,” Erin announced, striding rapidly away from the nun, “where the Mother Superior’s offices are located.”

The nun released Erin with a huffed indignation, leaving Reiner to catch up alone. They passed through an inner portal and entered a much larger courtyard filled with colorful playground equipment. “A school,” Reiner said.

“A prison.” Erin turned into a passage so ancient the outer walls were thicker than Reiner was tall. “A scourge.” She hammered her heels into each stone stair, so that they echoed with her words. “A pestilence. A misery. A torture. A place of hatred and pain and fear.”

“Only for some,” announced a quiet voice at the top of the winding stairwell. “Only for a very few.”

“You felt the exact same way.” Erin would have barreled right through the sister, had she not stepped away.

“Only for a time.”

“For years.” Erin marched into the office occupying the stone-lined corner. “How often were we whipped together?”

“Too often.” The Mother Superior held the door for Reiner and gave the baby a startled glance. “And not often enough.”

“Just exactly the sort of miserable response I would expect from someone who joined the enemy.”

“Sit down, Erin.”

“I will not be here that long.”

“Sit. Please.”

She crouched into the seat, her backside barely scraping the wood’s edge. Her hands formed claws around the carved armrests as she watched the Mother Superior step behind her desk. “I need your help.”

“You are looking well.” The few strands of hair escaping from beneath the nun’s habit were almost transparent, as though the silence had sufficient force to wash away all color, all pretense of freedom. Her voice held the eerie quality of being able to speak without ruffling the stillness. “I have heard you are doing great things.”

“Someone is after my baby,” Erin continued grimly. “I need you to look after her.”

Agnes looked at Reiner for the first time. Her gaze was as excruciating as the rest of this place. “Your husband?”

“My manager.”

“Ah. Of course.” She dismissed him. “You know we do not care for infants.”

“She is a child. You take children. She is merely a bit younger than most.”

“This is not possible.”

Reiner watched with the experience of years. He knew Erin had come expecting these words. And was prepared.