Louise Erdrich - The Master Butcher's Singing Club

“I was shot down,” said Franz suddenly, as if the kiss unstopped his tongue. “That was the first time. The next time, my engine quit on me. The worst of it was seeing my friends die — I saw Schumacher dragged onto a black reef off Corsica. He’d parachuted out. Another time, I saw Tom Simms go… his parachute was ripped apart by flak but he didn’t know it until the chute opened and then disintegrated above him. He gave two little kicks, as if to try and jump himself into the air, and then he just surrendered. It must have felt like a dream, I don’t know.”

Mazarine pulled his hand into the sleeve of her coat to warm it. He reached his other hand along her arm, up her other sleeve, then knelt before her holding her by the elbows and staring into her face. “I hope it felt like a dream,” she said.

A huge baffle of sorrow penned him. He hated that he nearly wept, a sob of hoarse anger that he choked back. He made his mouth move and talked quickly, his voice neutral.

“I could see spouts of light just below, the second time, but there was no sound to the fire so I knew I was deaf. My legs gave out on me, and I probably wouldn’t have had the strength to get out of my harness if I hadn’t…” But here Franz had to struggle for words, and stopped.

“Hadn’t what?”

Franz’s breath came harsh and he tried to slow his heart. He didn’t dare tell even Mazarine. He’d heard a woman’s voice that filled him with a powerful assurance. Eva’s voice. He’d put his arms out and was not surprised to feel her in front of him. He tucked his arms tight, closed his embrace around the waist of his mother. As he stepped into the air his eyes filled with blood. Blind, he held her. Falling, he heard her counting, low and musical, in German as she had when he was little, first on his fingers and then on her fingers, until his parachute opened and the earth swerved up to meet them.

“Part of the design,” he said, weary now, slumping.

Mazarine kissed him again and folded him down carefully next to her, wrapped him in the huge folds of coat that swathed her like a blanket. They lay back against a great root that had pulled itself from the ground like a damaged foot.

Holding on to Mazarine, Franz breathed the old crush of pine needles, the innocence of breakfast cooking. I’ll never get enough of her scent, he thought, I’ll never. He smelled her teacherliness, the waxen crayons and stiff, new paper, the same blue powdered soap that had always poured in a tiny stream from the metal dispensers above the Argus school sinks. She smelled of milk cartons, chalk dust, and tulips. She made him think of safety rules and clean hands and politeness to your neighbor. Franz felt himself floating off into a mesmerized half-sleep. He relaxed against her and she continued to hold him, stroking his hair, looking upward, listening to his heavily drawn breathing, to the greedy wash of the river and the hectoring and bitter arguments of crows as they wheeled among the whips and flails of spring branches.

FROM THE WAY Franz and Mazarine moved around each other, it was obvious to Delphine that they were lovers. Nothing most people would have caught — they were still too shy to even hold hands in front of their parents. It was more an awareness, as if they were two dancers carving lines in ordinary rooms. They leaned toward each other no matter what they were doing. Dazzled, electric, they laughed too quickly, ran out of breath, made gestures unexpectedly clumsy. The day after Franz left, Mazarine came to visit Delphine. The two women worked side by side, hands moving, desperate. They hardly spoke. They couldn’t sleep. It took days for them to even say his name.

It had been a dizzying relief to Delphine when Markus wrote to say he’d flunked the vision test and that he was probably going to be doing some sort of desk job at the OCS for the duration. Delphine was elated — it felt to her as though some reparation had been granted to them in the design of things — and she began at last to sleep. Markus wrote about ten or twenty times as many letters as Franz did, and later on he was able to talk about his job, which included writing other letters. Ghost letters by ghosts, written for ghosts, about ghosts. Those were the kinds of letters he composed. Delphine didn’t understand a word of it until he came home.

Markus had become a spare, thoughtful, professorial young man. Still, he had a quick laugh and a wicked talent for mimicry. Of course, she had expected that he would be very different. He was neat. A square package of cigarettes jutted from his breast pocket, and he was extraordinarily well groomed. The starch hadn’t wilted from the press of his pants and shirt. His face was meager and tired but his eyes were still Eva’s, filled with a penetrating sadness and rich good humor. He walked toward his father and without embracing the two sat to drink beer. From time to time they exchanged short and half-meaningless blurts of sound. They were so awkward at talking to each other that they were lost without Delphine. So she joined them, with her own beer, asked Markus what the letters he wrote were all about.

“Dead boys, Mom,” he told her. “I’m good at condolence and the commanding officers give me lists of names to write the letters to their parents. Of course, I never knew these guys. I never know how they lived or who they were or how they died. I’m becoming quite adept at the art of creative fiction, I guess you could say, but I hate it.”

He took a long drink of cold beer and the three let a quietness collect at the table. Then Markus abruptly set his bottle down, and said, “I’m here for something else… I wasn’t sure that I would tell you because it might just be a wild hair. But here’s the thing…” Markus squared his shoulders, folded his hands. Then he unfolded his hands, drummed his fingers on his knees, and addressed the tabletop, frowning as though he wasn’t sure he should say what he had to say.

“There’s this guy,” he finally told them. “I ran across him and we were having a smoke because he’s from the Midwest anyway, Illinois, right, and he’s been transferred. Anyway, we swap our names and when he hears mine, my last name, he makes me repeat it twice and he gets this look on his face, like he’s remembering something. All of a sudden he snaps his fingers and he says, ‘I know why you look familiar… and that name. There is this guy looks kinda like you and he’s got the same name Waldsomething in the camp where I was a guard way up north.’ His first name? He didn’t know. He’s a POW.”

Fidelis put his beer down with slow precision. He adjusted the glass on the table, then raised his head. He stared quizzically at Markus, and when his son looked back at him, biting his lip, nodding slightly, Fidelis hid his face in his hands. For a long time no one said a thing. There was a fuzzy quiet in the kitchen, and the cranking whine and then roar of the cooler generators across the yard underneath the wild grape vines. Schatzie appeared at the door and Delphine rose and let her in. Everyone watched the dog walk calmly through the room, straight to her post in the hall. Markus took a sip of his beer again, and then he spoke. “The guy said one other thing… I should tell you. He said this prisoner… he never talks, but sings. The guy can sing, this Waldvogel.”

Fidelis gripped his fingers together now, and his head began to nod up and down as he glared before him.

“I got us a clearance. It took some doing, but I’ve got the papers right here.” Markus patted his breast pocket. “So I’m heading up there tomorrow,” he said, very softly.

“I am going with you,” said Fidelis. “Can we get him released from this place? Er ist ein Junge .”

“I know,” said Markus, “but I doubt they’ll let him go. To tell the truth, I know they won’t, Dad, but we can visit him. That’s something. It’s a big thing, Dad — you don’t know how hard I worked, how many strings I pulled.”