Louise Erdrich - The Master Butcher's Singing Club

It wasn’t the argument about the politics — it was the other, the unexpressed. All that she feared about the lay of her heart and did not examine. Nothing is by accident, nothing is by chance, she told herself. I went in to see that delver of minds for a very good reason: whether or not she could see the whole thing, I wanted to get my own mind clear. I had to hear myself say those things, had to hear out loud what I don’t even know I am thinking inside. I had to sit there with that white-haired lady and put it all out where I can see the shape of it.

THEY ALL WALKED together into the great stone building set inside with tiny corridors of offices where papers were processed. The office ran in balconies around a central shaft open to the ground floor. Dusty light poured down from a vaulted skylight ornamented with obscure struggling figures. The boys craned upward, and Delphine held their hands, walking them up the broad stone stairway. Outside the room where passport photographs were taken, people waited in a line along the corridor, some on the floor, some slumped against the wall. It was a very long line. Tante was tired, but she didn’t slump. Her stiff suit seemed to hold her up. She made a face of severe annoyance, and said that the boys needed to eat.

Delphine seized her chance. “Let’s go and get them some sandwiches,” she said to Fidelis.

Tante said immediately, “Don’t bother. No. We’re not that hungry.”

“The boys ate nothing,” Delphine said, with a composed firmness.

“They’ll live,” said Tante, curt and loud. She produced, with an air of triumph, a clutch of lemon drops from her purse. Their sugary coating had gathered the usual purse dust, and they were stuck together in one lump. Tante cracked it lightly against the wall and gave a piece of the candy to each of the twins, a tiny sliver to Markus.

“There,” she concluded, “that will hold them.”

“That stuff’ll rot their teeth,” said Delphine. “Let’s get them some nourishment,” she said to Fidelis. Then she looked straight into his face, opened her eyes, let the dull radiance from the great central skylight cascade down upon her, and she smiled.

“You could use the air, too,” she said. “Come along.” And he followed.

Outside, in the street, walking toward a delicatessen they’d both spotted, Delphine began to speak with a simple urgency. “I’ve got nothing to lose,” she said to Fidelis, “so I’m going to talk. Listen. You can’t let Maria Theresa take them back to Germany, Fidelis, it is all wrong. Impossible. You can see that she doesn’t know crap about taking care of boys.”

“My mother will care for them once they are settled,” said Fidelis.

They reached the doors to the shop, and almost entered, but Delphine’s mind spun furiously. She didn’t want to divert Fidelis from the problem with the mundane selection of cheap sandwiches. “Let’s keep walking around this block. I’ve got more to say.”

“It is done,” said Fidelis.

“No, it’s not, and you owe me to listen.”

That got him — he never liked to owe anyone. And he knew she was right, knew that she’d cared for his sons to the full extent of her powers and beyond the limits of her job ever since Eva died. So they didn’t go into the deli but kept walking.

“In Germany,” explained Fidelis, “they learn the proper way to do things.”

“Maybe so.” Delphine breathed deep, tried to stay calm so she could argue reasonably. “But then what? Do you think they’ll want to come back here and help you in the shop? Do you think Tante will even let them come back?”

Fidelis looked down at her, his face distinctly tightening. It was clear that he’d thought of this deep down, but stuffed away his apprehensions, or argued himself out of them. He paused, but then he spoke in a light, determined voice.

“Then I go over there and get them myself!”

“I read in the newspaper that new government is keeping any Germans who visit,” said Delphine. It was purely a rumor at the time, though it would indeed prove true, but Delphine decided to use it. “And the boys… what if the borders shut? You know what the war was like.”

But that was going too far. Fidelis became serious and spoke with an earnest fervor. “I have seen war — there could never be another war! Es ist unmöglich! I believe this Hitler is strengthening the country for peace. That is why the family does good — and they buy things for the boys. They have money.”

“Money!” said Delphine, fighting a surge of anger. “All well enough, but these are the sons you had with Eva!”

Her name dropped between them like an anvil.

Now Delphine used the fact that she had been saving for a moment like this, when the stakes were huge.

“Tante stole the morphine — you must know that. How can you send your sons with the woman who made Eva suffer? At least leave Markus here! I’ll take care of him!”

They both stopped walking at the same time. There, in that windy street, they looked at each other. Fidelis’s face was grim and ashen. Her face turned up toward his, a challenge, her eyes narrowed and watchful. When she stared at him, her eyes a magnetic ore, Fidelis felt himself moving toward her, nodding, allowing her to take control. As though the wind had pushed him, just a little, off his feet, he took a step to right his balance. He couldn’t think of anything else to say, because of course she was right. Tante wasn’t good with Markus. And yet, he looked away from her. Tante was right about some things. The younger boys would be better off back in Ludwigsruhe, surrounded by family, not digging their way into hills and floating down the river and nearly drowning themselves.

“I can’t watch them enough,” he said to Delphine, and he put his hands in his pockets and looked down at the mottled concrete sidewalk between them. He had something more to say, and he didn’t want to say it. “I don’t have the money to pay you anymore.”

“I know,” said Delphine, impatient. “That doesn’t matter. I want…” Then she was staring at the sidewalk, too. They stood there so long, both with the next words on their lips, that it seemed as though they might sink right through the stonework. The words had too much weight. Fidelis put his hand to his chin, looked down at her standing there, the smart taupe hat cocked over one side of her face, the little veil, the green feather. Without any warning, surprising him, his hand reached out. He touched the tip of the green feather. Her lips were naturally dark, not pink at all, but a deeper brownish crimson. He took a ragged breath.

“Cyprian,” he said.

She looked at him and then her smile flashed, and her comma-shaped dimples, her strong white teeth. He was dazzled by the freshness of her expression even before she spoke, shaking her head.

“Cyprian and I were never married.”

He took that in. That was something, and it was nothing. The two started walking again, side by side. They had nearly circled the block again before Fidelis found the words he wanted to say. It was difficult finding them at all, because he was ashamed of what he’d thought right after Cyprian had rescued Markus. Along with the relief and gratitude, Fidelis had suddenly been struck by an understanding: he could never, ever, in any way, make a claim upon Delphine. He owed the man she was with, the man he’d fought. He owed Cyprian. Even as he wished it were otherwise now, too, the marriage vow or lack of it did not figure into the picture. Delphine and Cyprian’s union was perhaps a shocking thing, but in fact it often happened that two people pretended to be married to thwart small-town gossip. He had noticed for some time she wasn’t wearing her wedding band. They had come full circle, around the block, and returned to their starting point.