“We cannot trust you with your brother.”
“No one needs to know—”
“Nuns will pick you up on the other side.” He strides off the ferry, holds up both palms to stop her.
On the dock he waits till the ferry is out too far for her to swim back without drowning.
Nothing out there. Nothing outside my body that is mine. And with that Tilli’s insides clench around the baby. It’s all I have.
Her first night in the long dormitory of the St. Margaret Home the moon keeps her awake; she cries without sound, pretends to sleep while other Girls practice dance steps in their long nightgowns. But they won’t let her pretend. Tug her from her bed and into their circle, warn that dancing can get you big. Dancing with men, that is. Two have taken lessons at a Tanzschule—dance school—and show Tilli how to waltz and polka. They don’t know that the Sisters can hear them dance and are glad for that brief joy. None of the Girls are from Nordstrand. To take a pregnant daughter to a home nearby invites gossip, shame for generations to come. Instead, a daughter is sent away—as far as a family can afford—to shed all evidence of her sin and return home if her parents let her as if nothing happened during this long interruption of her life.
In class the Girls throw blackboard erasers at each other till puffs of chalk swirl and settle on Sisters’ habits; but their disobedience stirs Tilli, inspires her. She helps Veronika stitch the ends of sleeves shut and giggles when other Girls’ arms get stuck. Lies are not lies, Veronika says, if they have to do with pranks. Then they don’t need to be confessed.
6
Some Join the Zirkus When There’s Nothing Left
Two days after the wave, Kalle Jansen approaches the Ludwigs about employment.
“Any woodwork. New or repairs.”
“The wagon panels,” says Silvio Ludwig.
“Ja,” his father says, “but—”
“Sick animals … I can make them well.”
“—but your wife needs you.”
“Not anymore.”
Some join the Zirkus when there’s nothing left, and the toymaker’s reasons they understand because they, too, searched for his children and have seen him and Lotte comb the edge of the sea, heading in opposite directions.
“I’m good with sick animals,” he says quietly.
Silvio Ludwig lays both hands on Kalle’s shoulders. “We know you’re a skilled worker.”
“Skilled and strong,” Herr Ludwig agrees. “If you still want to work for us next year, you can.”
But the following day the toymaker is back, and the Ludwigs can see he’s determined to get away from Nordstrand.
“If not with us, then with another Zirkus.”
“We can’t afford to miss out.”
They shake hands with him, Herr Ludwig squeezing hard to prove his strength because he is weakening. Some nights he startles himself awake, terrified he’ll cry if he closes his eyes. But when he must cry, he does so quietly, afraid of waking his son. Most of all, Herr Ludwig is afraid of being afraid.
* * *
Friday morning Kalle wraps his carving tools into layers of flannel. In the kitchen Lotte sews an antler button back on Martin’s cardigan. She’s been like that for days: washing and mending the clothes of their children.
“I can’t stay,” he whispers.
“When will you be back?”
“I— I don’t know.”
She yanks the needle through a hole in the button, through the knitting, yanks the needle up through the other hole, across the antler button, down into the first hole. It’s dim in the kitchen where the windows face the slope of the dike.
“The Ludwigs hired me to travel with them.”
She slips off her thimble. Bites off the thread.
He winces. “Bad for your teeth. You know that it can do more damage than cracking a walnut.”
She jabs the needle into the pincushion. “Coward.” Her voice is eerily calm.
But he feels her screaming inside and wishes she would scream at him, strike and kick him though they’ve never inflicted pain on each other. “It may be easier for you if I’m gone.”
“Easier for me? Don’t you lie to me.”
“I’m not lying.”
She folds Martin’s cardigan. Flattens the wool with her fingertips. Unfolds the cardigan.
Kalle needs to get away from her. But won’t it be rude to turn his back?
“It’s a lie to say you’re doing this for me. You coward.”
He takes one long step backward and it’s like trying to reach ground from the third rung of a ladder. Another step. And another. Until he feels the door behind him.
“Be gone then,” she whispers.
* * *
Outside the farmhouse, his dogs lie curled around each other, twitching in their sleep. He gages the mood of the Nordsee: chalky like laundry water; sky steel-gray. Mist swishes across the flats, a thousand tiny feet, curves up the dike making him feel he’s walking on unsteady land that can betray him.
From that mist a black sail emerges, coasts along the crest of the dike: Sister Elinor on the convent bicycle. Chasing after her is Verrückter Hund. Crazy Dog. That’s what the Sisters yell after him with much affection, “Verrückter Hund!” Long legs on a short frame. Fur that matches the Sisters’ habits and wimple: black except for white on the throat and forehead.
Sister Elinor is the oldest of the Sisters, but her body is the most agile. She relishes the strength in her thighs, the exquisite pressure of the seat.
When she waves to the toymaker, the bicycle wobbles, and he drops his bundle, sprints up the dike. Wolf-like with his powerful legs and ice-blue eyes. Like the eyes of the Alaskan wolf on her holy card of the Alaskan saint who journeyed up and down the biggest river in Alaska—the name, what is the name of that river? The toymaker grips Sister’s bicycle, one hand on the frame, one against the back of the saddle, braces her with his body. Heat bolts from her toes through her knees and up, barely contained by the folds of her habit, a heat that makes her hem ripple. If people knew what bliss nuns can feel, they’d find us less mystifying.
“Would you like to rest, Sister?”
She remembers the name of the river. “Yukon.”
“Yukon?” He looks a bit gewöhnlich—common—with his fleshy lips and beard stubble.
“Your children inhabit my prayers.”
He stares at the ground. Tries to swallow. “Thank you, Sister.”
“I used to be a ballerina. As a girl. As a young woman.” She tries to stop talking but her voice gets faster. “I danced on four different stages. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be prideful, but I was adored, admired. I was born New Year’s Eve of the past century. Seventeen ninety-nine. If only it had been four hours later, during the first hours of the new century…”
The toymaker raises his black eyebrows, one unbroken line.
“I have been staring at you,” she says. “I must get home.”
“Would you like me to walk with you?”
That damn heat throughout her body again. “Oh no.” Sister Elinor climbs on the bicycle and pedals away from him, past the thatched roof of the beekeeper, past three other farms, past the church, and the Zirkus wagons in the meadow of the St. Margaret Home, pedals hard, reminding herself to pray. Pray for the toymaker’s wife. Pray for the big-bellied Girls. Pray for those who believe they can tame the sea. Such hubris. They only provoke retribution; must relinquish more than they seized. Not only with the sea but with all that makes them grasp for more.