Louise Erdrich - The Master Butcher's Singing Club

“Thanks, that’s nice,” she had the grace to say. “Where’s yours?”

“I’m getting it.” He went back to the kitchen, ladled his own soup out, and carried it before him while he dragged along a chair so he could sit down next to her.

“Hey,” he said, even though he knew he was in dangerous territory, “you know what they say about oysters.”

He was relieved when she didn’t come up with anything sarcastic, and hopeful when she said, “This tastes good.”

Before he ate, he put his soup down and quickly relighted all the candles. They flickered and glowed, shadowing the walls, and made the room into, he thought, a very beautiful and secret-looking place. He sat down with her and sipped at the hot, briny soup, and said nothing. Perhaps the peace of the room itself would get her into the mood he was trying to inspire.

“Say,” he said, “how about that tree? You see I got tinsel?”

She didn’t say anything. He was getting angry now. He could feel that cold trickle up the center of him, that shiver.

“I’m trying to make you happy.” His voice was tense, ready to rise out of control, but she didn’t seem to care if she pushed him over his limit. She shrugged and looked away from him.

He got up, snatched away her soup, spilling some on her dress, and brought the bowls into the kitchen. “Steady,” he said aloud, to himself, in a low voice, but there was pressure behind his eyes. His skull seemed to press on his brain, like a too tight hat, and he thought for a moment he should just step outside again into the black cold, but he didn’t, and he made the mistake of walking straight back into the room and glaring down at Delphine.

“Why the hell don’t you just go back to them, then?” he asked.

“What are you talking about?”

“You know. Him. Them.” He was so choking mad that if he said the man’s name he knew he’d explode. And yet he was helpless because had no right to explode. He took the little green-and-red-wrapped box from his pants pocket and, just exactly the way he didn’t want to do it, he flung it at Delphine with a light movement of scorn. “Here,” he said, “I bought you a present.”

The tiny box landed in her lap. She didn’t pick it up. But she looked at it for a while. He breathed hard, standing in the doorway, and bit his lip so that he wouldn’t shout at her to open it. Finally she nudged it, though gently, with a finger.

“It’s pretty,” she said, “what is it, a ring?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice cracking a little, his anger changing all of a sudden to a longing so precise and painful he felt his heart squeezing, hot, in his chest, as though her initials were branded on it. The skin on his face prickled and he wanted to throw himself at her feet. She looked up at him from where she sat in the chair, the little box in her lap, and her foxlike face blazed in the light of candles. The flames jumped in her eyes and her hair sprang out in a dim aureole from her warm, flushed cheeks — she smiled at him but it wasn’t the smile he wanted, it was a weary sort of smile. He sagged a bit against the entrance and looked down at his feet.

As for Delphine, sitting there in the flare of Cyprian’s hopeful candles with the ring box in her lap, she thought back to their balancing act. The secretive light sent her into a strange, reflective, obstinate mood. Again, she saw herself walk out before the crowd in her long red skirt. There was the tea tray, set on her torso. She became the human table. Only in her mind, instead of chairs one by one men came out and balanced on her flint hard stomach. A stack of boys and men. Cyprian and Fidelis. The twins, Emil and Erich. Then Franz, and Markus, at last her father. All were precariously balanced on her phenomenally tough midsection. And she was down there, thinking what thoughts, feeling what feelings? What could she say? One word and they all might topple. One word could throw them off. So she didn’t say anything, but her arms and legs started to shake.

“Delphine,” said Cyprian, quietly now, his voice neutral and impassive, “why don’t you just go to bed?”

But she was still looking down at the little box. She was staring at it as though she could see through the wrappings into the velvet case. So he picked it up out of her lap, put it back in his pocket, and left her.

* * *

CYPRIAN GOT INTO THE CAR, sat for a moment gathering his thoughts and then he started the car up violently and roared down the road into town. He felt slightly better as he entered the pool hall, and much better as he made himself exquisitely drunk. He left the pool hall in the blackness before dawn, already feeling the whiskey fade. Immediately, he drove to the house of Delphine’s friend, Clarisse. He knocked too loudly, pounded really, with a drunken indignation.

Clarisse jumped off the couch where she was sleeping, ran to the door to shut up the racket. She opened the door suspiciously, blinking sleep from her eyes. She was wearing a flimsy gown in which she seemed quite bitterly cold. Her usually rosy face was pale, her lips almost blue. Shivering, she let him in. There was a large, packed suitcase on a mat next to the door, and a smart red hatbox sitting on a chair. While he stomped his feet and rubbed his hands, she took her time, walked away from him, as if she didn’t know he could see her ass and legs through the thin pink material. She picked up a fluffy blue blanket from her sofa, but didn’t wrap it around herself until she’d passed from his sight.

“Come on in,” she said, beckoning him toward the kitchen. He sat down at her table. Suddenly, she seemed all recovered — toasty looking. Her cheeks glowed and her curls gleamed. She spun around holding the blanket on with one hand. She said she’d make him some coffee. Once she prepared the coffeepot and left it to boil, she sat across from him, rubbed her eyes with soft little kitten fists. Yawning pertly, shaking her head as if to clear it, but really making her curls bounce charmingly, she said, her voice a dreamy pout, “So, what is it?”

“Merry Christmas,” he said as he slowly pushed, across her kitchen table, the tiny green box.

THE CRATE FROM GERMANY, which the boys had waited until Christmas to open, contained extraordinary things. For Franz, there was a coat made of top-grade wool, beautifully sewn and lined with the heavy sort of satin Fidelis remembered from his youth. The boys each had a pair of leather boots, and the boots fit, thanks to Tante, who had kept her mother updated as to the boys’ sizes in her letters. There were small things — carved and brilliantly painted tops, the books Max und Moritz and Der Struwwelpeter , and small horses with legs that moved. For the twins, vast regiments of soldiers in every pose and their equipment, too. For Markus, a thick hat and knitted sweater. Tante received an embroidered shawl, which she pretended was a scarf. A shawl was an old person’s gift. Fidelis, a meerschaum pipe and Turkish tobacco. Everything was packed in great wads of worthless old reichsmarks —a trillion to the dollar. On the top, there were a few precious newspapers which Fidelis and Tante fought over good-naturedly as they ate their burnt cookies and sweet stollen and drank cups of strong coffee.

After everything was opened and the songs were sung, after the candles were put out and the boys were immersed in playing with their gifts, Tante and Fidelis continued to sit together. They talked about how well their family was doing, at last, back in the old town. Pictures bloomed in their minds, and they looked silently into the air, half smiling. They remembered the brick shop building that their father’s father had built, with the stone rosettes placed under the eaves. Three stories, it was.