Then, unable to help herself, she looked out the window for the crow in the semidark. The sun sank late this time of year; it was nearly ten and still the meadow glowed. The patch of woods beyond was enveloped in black. At the edge, a form distinguished itself. Still broken, still hobbling, no better, no worse.
Marianne pulled on her boots and jacket and quietly let herself out. There it was. As the door closed, the crow stopped. Her eyes adjusted to the dark. She approached quietly, and it remained still until she was a meter away. Then it swelled up, puffed its feathers, and seemed to sigh without lifting its head from its chest. It blinked, and its beak glinted faintly in the dark. The wing was beyond repair; a bit of bone protruded from the black feathers, which were stripped away by the cat’s claws, revealing a patch of bluish, reptilian skin.
They stood for some time together. It observed her with wariness, even intelligence. Wind rustled the trees. Marianne hunched inside her jacket, chilly despite the night’s warmth. The bird would die here alone in the darkness. Would it gradually starve? Or would the cat return to finish it off? Or some other night creature—a fox or weasel or barn owl?
She did not want to leave it.
You are not alone, she thought. Don’t be afraid. You are beloved. And the words filled her mind, big enough to transcend and spread out into the night. Marianne was not a religious person, but she felt the presence of something divine. The bird was an angel. The bird was Albrecht.
No, she realized with star-bright clarity: it was Connie.
She spread her coat on the grass and lay down beside it, and at some point she drifted off to sleep. When she woke in the first gray light of dawn, the bird was gone and Connie was dead.
Chapter Six
Burg Lingenfels, July 1945
Lying in her cot at Burg Lingenfels, Benita did not open Connie’s letter. Through her sickness, its presence on the bedside table exerted a ghoulish force. In her dreams, she would try to read it, but the words swam before her eyes, long and ponderous, so obscure as to be incomprehensible, or worse, dull. No sense would shake from its folds. And Connie himself hovered at the periphery of her sleep. She saw him across a crowded party or at the end of a hall, or even in the shadows here in her room, but it was impossible to connect. He would be engrossed in conversation with a colleague, or flirting with another woman, or simply slip out of her sight as she approached. When she woke, sweaty with fever, rattled by stress, she wanted nothing to do with his letter and blamed it for her nightmares. I love you, I’m sorry . . . It didn’t matter what he said. Their marriage was what it was—and now it was over. Connie was dead.
“Can you put this away somewhere?” Benita asked Elisabeth one night when the girl came to deliver her evening soup in Marianne’s place.
“Where?” Elisabeth asked. She was a stolid, literal girl and did not seem surprised.
Benita cast her eyes around the bare room. “Anywhere that I don’t have to see it,” she answered.
So Elisabeth stuck it in the chest of drawers that housed Benita’s few possessions. And after that, Benita’s sleep improved.
Benita had been sick for three weeks when she woke to find a strange man in her room. Her first thought was of what she must look like. The edges of her mouth were dry and cracked, and her nightgown sweat-stained. The sheets lay twisted at her feet. She scrambled to cover herself and became light-headed with the effort.
Marianne, who had come in with the stranger, was wrestling open the ancient window and made no move to assist her. “This is Herr Muller,” she said, turning back to Benita, who remained huddled on the cot. “He has come to help around the castle today, and I thought he could begin by taking you outside. The sun will do you good.”
Benita stared at Marianne. “Could I—” She clutched the open neck of her nightgown. “Could I have a minute first to dress?”
“Ah! Of course!” Marianne said. “Herr Muller, would you give us a moment?”
It was so like Marianne to act first and then think. Even in the daze of sickness, Benita recognized this. Marianne had no patience for mundane concerns like appearance or propriety.
“Who is he?” Benita managed to ask as Marianne helped her tug a pair of trousers on under her nightdress.
“A prisoner,” Marianne said brusquely. “Someone the Americans sent.” Her tone forbade more questions. A German. But Benita had already recognized this.
When he reentered the room, head slightly bowed and eyes averted, Benita felt a wave of shame. He was a good-looking man, too thin for his large frame, with a bold, strong-featured face and a square forehead. He seemed to understand her embarrassment. It confirmed that she was right to feel self-conscious. Sickness and the war had made her ugly and broken-down.
But when he lifted her—easily, as if she were an armload of feather ticking—she felt unaccustomedly feminine. The gingerness of his touch, the careful placement of his hand so that it would not brush against her breast, the heat of his forearm under her thighs brought something dormant in her to life. As her light, hot head bounced against his shoulder, she was filled with a sense of relief. His manner projected competence. In his arms she felt like a baby picked up and collected by its mother, purring with the pleasure of being held. To her embarrassment, her eyes filled with tears.
“Are you all right?” he asked as he navigated the curving stone stairs, and she nodded, unable to speak.
Outside, he laid her on a straw mattress underneath the chestnut tree. The sun was beautiful and dappled, and the breeze brushed across her cheek like a breath, lifting her shorn hair from her scalp. She was not chilled and aching or struggling for breath, and she was filled with wonder at her own painlessness.
“Is this a good place?” the man asked, bringing her back to the moment.
“Thank you,” she managed to say, nodding.
His eyes glanced up at hers then—shockingly blue, like one of those eerie northern dogs, light rather than the deepwater blue of Connie’s. And something like recognition, only sharper, passed between them.
Why are you here? she wanted to ask, but then Martin came running—her sweet, lovely boy, his cheeks pink from play, his forehead sweaty. He crouched before her and she lifted a hand to his face, the beautiful child she had lost and found. And she forgot all about the man who had just carried her down.
For the next few weeks, Herr Muller helped Benita downstairs every time he came to the castle—first carrying her and then, as her strength returned, supporting her as she walked. He was not a talker, but she questioned him anyway. He was from Braunschweig, a city not far from where she had grown up, which perhaps explained his familiarity. Before the war he had been a carpenter. He had a daughter and a father still living in the home he had left.
And your wife? she asked, knowing she was being forward.