Max was restless as a puppy when he finally woke. He walked with Etta along the streets, and people nodded at Etta and stopped to shake his hand and to wish him well. He’s back, they said, God bless you both, and she thanked them, but when she stayed to talk, Max tugged at her arm. They were on their way to church, but he wanted to see the river first. He wanted to sit by the bank. He walked fast, setting his hands inside his pockets. A few times he stopped and turned around to see. He looked at the butcher-shop window and the ironwork balconies with their flowerpots, at the fountain and the old linden tree where the boys went in summer to play. It was all just the same. The church steeples and the pharmacy with its polished countertop and the waterspout down by the square. He looked at all these things, and he reached out to the sandstone walls and smiled.
He had slept for almost forty-two hours. He awoke once or twice and waved to Etta from his bed and then fell fast asleep again. He slept even when the floorboards creaked and the clock chimed by his door. Josef had grown impatient when Max didn’t wake up. He went fussy. He paced around the kitchen, then out to his workshop, once, twice, three times, and finally to town, to drink at the gasthaus with the other men who were too old to fight but could talk of little else. There was not enough soap or butter or wool, there hadn’t been in years, but there was plenty of watery beer in town, and the few men left did their best to drink it. They sat at their table and bickered, and after a while old Herr Scherber brought out his deck, and then they didn’t leave until dinnertime.
Max tugged at her hand and they passed the steps that led to the bridge, following the path by the bank where the reeds grew and the river grasses. Farther along the ferryman sat waiting on his boat. Even on Sunday he worked. Ten pfennig to cross, seven for the pretty girls, and he talked while he rowed and whistled through the gap in his teeth. “Faster than the bridge,” he’d say, “much faster, and you get my singing, too.” The air was soft and buttery, warm as April and not October. The sky had cleared, and the sun shone on the water. A few fishermen tended to their barrels, and tomorrow the ladies would come and haggle, pointing to one fish and then another before reaching for their purses. Farther down little boys ran along the bank, jackets open because there wouldn’t be many days like this, a few more and then the damp would come and the river would run to gray.
They came to the benches and sat together. A boat came by. It was a big one this time, and it sounded its horn when it came close. Men were uncoiling ropes in the front and the back. They shouted and waved their arms. Just last year a crowd had come and looted all the ships. She knew the old men who did it. Nimble as boys they jumped aboard and threw down what they found. It was only ribbon in the crates. Bolts of seam binding in yellow and purple and cornflower blue, strange bright colors that were nothing like the clothes that people wore, especially now, when fabric and dye were scarce. How strange it was, men on canes and little boys and women holding babies to their chest, all shouting and shoving each other to catch the ribbon as it fell. A pair of old women fought over a red bolt, their lips pulled back from their teeth, and they looked like wolves and not women, wolves fighting over a bloodied piece of meat. They kept pulling even after the ribbon had come undone between them and they’d stomped it into the mud. Girls wore dresses made from the binding afterward. Their mothers had split the ribbon lengthwise and knit with it, and they pretended the yarn was theirs. All this time it’s been in my cupboard, they said. I remembered it just now. They should have been ashamed for stealing. They should have hung their heads, but people didn’t feel shame anymore. They lied and after a while they believed the lies they told, and this is how it went.
“How often do the headaches come?” Etta set her arm around his shoulders. She could see the fine blue veins in his temples, and she wanted to lay her fingers over them to feel the beat of his blood. “Are you better now that you’ve slept?”
He looked toward the water and the bend where he’d gone swimming when he was little, where the vines grew around the trees and the bravest boys swung like monkeys from the branches. He always made a mess when he came home. “Just look at the mud you brought inside,” she’d say, “look at all the water,” and he left his shoes by the door and walked barefoot through the house.
“I haven’t seen any planes yet,” he said. “Not a single one.”
“It’s early still.” The planes came in the evening. They flew low sometimes, and once they dropped bombs over the fields and scared the women who’d gone digging for potatoes. God help us, they’re coming. They jumped into ditches and covered their heads. God help us, we’re dead for an apronful of potatoes. And not the good potatoes either, but the small ones the farmers threw aside.
She took his hand. Good that he was sitting outside. His skin was translucent, the color of invalids and angel heads and the ivory church saints, and he needed sunshine to bring the pink back to his face. She set his hand between both of hers and squeezed.
“I’m worried about Georg,” she said. They’d taken him from her once already. They took him to the school and the next time they took him they’d send him to fight, and who knew when he’d come home then. He wasn’t even shaving yet. No whiskers on his cheeks, and they were making him into a soldier.
“I can hear them.” Max watched the boat come to dock. A few old men onshore were lining up to help with the crates. They were bringing carts and straps.
“It’s quiet today. It’s only the boats you hear.” She shifted on the bench and thought about what to say to him and what to ask.
“They’re coming over the hills,” he said. “Any moment they’ll be coming and then we’ll burn to ashes.” He pulled his hand from hers.
They walked together up Obertorstrasse just as the bells began to ring. They rang at St. Laurentius in the center of town and then at the smaller evangelical church on Friedenstrasse where the Protestants went. When he was done in Heidenfeld the ringer rode his bicycle up to Rothenfels and climbed the towers there. He rang them to mark the hours and before confession and evening mass, and when people died he rang them extra slow, those passing bells, and everyone stopped to listen. Not even thirty yet, and he was deafer than a grandfather. The bells were his salvation. He stayed home when all the other boys left to fight.
Max flinched a little at the sound. “It’s another sour milk day,” he said.
“The milk’s not sour.” She pointed to the shuttered stand. “It’s closed today. We won’t have more until next week.” It was strange the way he talked. It made her uneasy. She didn’t let her milk spoil. Her food was fresh and her kitchen clean, and he wasn’t making any sense. She wished Josef were there with them, but he had stopped going to services years before, except for obligatory visits on Easter and Christmas Eve, and even then he griped about the priest. “That fat old mule,” Josef said, “he’ll choke on a sausage, God willing, and then we’ll have some peace.” She scolded him when he started in. Pfarrer Büchner was a fine speaker. And Josef would be fat, too, if people brought him the best cutlets and wine by the case. He’d be round like a barrel.
A few ladies came up to say hello, but Max looked right past them. He tilted his head and smiled.