His wife was dead.
Mostly they proceeded in silence, which Benita did not feel pressured to fill. She found his quiet steadiness comforting. He reminded her of the men of Frühlinghausen, men who worked with their hands and ate dinner in silence. Men like her father, a quiet hulking presence in her childhood, falling asleep in his chair after dinner with his red hands splayed like slabs of meat on his knees. She had spent her girlhood scheming to escape such men, but now, in Herr Muller’s presence, she found she missed the way they made her feel.
As she regained her strength, she began taking short trips around the castle, to the stables, the bakehouse, the kitchen garden. It had been so long since she’d been free to walk where she wanted. The openness of the countryside, the smell of summer grasses, the clouds of dust on the road were all suddenly beautiful to her. The war had quashed any romantic notions she once held of the city.
On one of these walks, she came across Herr Muller piling split wood under the eave of a dilapidated outbuilding that had once been the castle brewery.
“Frau Fledermann,” he said, straightening. “Are you well enough to walk all this way? On your own?”
“Of course!” she said through her breathlessness. It had, in fact, been a little far.
“Ah.” Muller looked uncertain. He mopped the sweat off his brow. “Here,” he said, leveling the stack of logs in the wheelbarrow and spreading his jacket over the top. “Sit a minute and catch your breath.”
Light-headed, Benita complied. She could feel the sweat running under her arms and standing at the edge of her hairline. The barrow was in the shade of the building and beyond this, the sun was hot. Two huge dragonflies hung and swooped, attached head to tail, across this boundary of shadow and light.
Muller regarded Benita with concern. His pose struck her as clownish—this large man, peering at her so tentatively.
“I went to Carnival in Braunschweig once,” she offered impulsively. “With my troop—my BDM cluster.” As she spoke, she remembered the parade—the colorful floats of costumed dancers and local school groups, business associations, and social clubs. There were giant papier-maché caricatures of knights and princesses, tableaus of political figures and folktale characters. And everywhere the smells of beer, crisp potato pancakes, sausages, and sugary donuts. She had gone with a group of classmates and they had schemed to meet their future husbands. Schoduvel, they called Carnival in Braunschweig—“Scare the Devil.” The city had seemed huge and magical and dangerous.
“Ah.” Muller smiled, and Benita felt him relax. He leaned back against the wood he had stacked.
“It was wonderful,” she said. “Did you go every year?”
“When I was a boy.”
“And not after?”
“And sometimes after.” He smiled again, now looking sheepish.
“Of course!” she said. “Why wouldn’t you?! Did you ride the Ferris wheel?”
“Always.”
“It was amazing, wasn’t it?” She remembered the rocking, and the exhilarating sense of danger that was not actually danger at all. “I would have done it a million times if I could.”
“And then come down for a Weissbier and a plate of Kartoffelpuffer.”
“Exactly.” Benita smiled.
Companionable silence passed between them.
“I was the Carnival princess in Frühlinghausen once,” she said.
Muller raised his eyebrows and tipped an imaginary cap, bowing his head. “Your Highness.”
“Did you have one in Braunschweig?”
“The mayor’s wife.” He puffed out his cheeks. “Too fat to ride in the parade carriage.”
Benita laughed. The dragonflies darted into the sun, frightened by the sound.
“It feels impossible now, doesn’t it?” she said, and then wished she hadn’t. The words invited melancholy. “Never mind.” She shook her head. “I should start back or Marianne will worry.” She extended her hand to Muller. “Will you help me stand?”
He bowed slightly. “Gn?dige princess.”
At dinner Benita found the courage to mention Herr Muller.
It was a change from their usual topic of conversation: whom Marianne had received a letter from, and where they were . . . She was engaged in a questlike search for other widows like Benita—the lost wives and mothers and faithful secretaries (a category Benita found deeply suspicious) of Connie and Albrecht’s fellow conspirators. Even now, with the country’s infrastructure in shambles, Marianne managed to exchange letters and telegrams with friends and acquaintances from all over. Mostly these were women Benita didn’t know or had felt snubbed by because she was so young, so uneducated, so unfitting a bride for Connie. But there were others still missing from Marianne’s careful catalog: the wives of men on the outskirts of the group, beyond Marianne’s social circles.
“How long will the Americans keep their prisoners?” Benita managed to ask before Marianne could get started on the subject.
Marianne glanced up from serving the soup: a tasteless cabbage and carrot and potato that neither she nor Benita knew how to improve.
“I don’t know,” Marianne said. “I think they’ll be sent to France for the rebuilding.”
“The terrible ones,” Elisabeth said.
“Really?” Fritz asked, wide eyed. The boy had a grim fascination with all the most horrible details emerging about the Nazis—psychopaths like Josef Kramer, the Beast of Belsen, as they now referred to him, a man who had personally gassed eighty Jews for his collection of skeletons.
“Elisabeth,” Marianne scolded, “you have no idea who they send where. Don’t give your brother wrongheaded facts.” She turned to Benita. “Why do you ask?”
“I was just thinking of Herr Muller,” Benita ventured.
“Ah!” Marianne frowned. “I haven’t asked Peterman how long he’ll be here—but we can get by without him, certainly.”
“Of course.” Benita nodded.
“They can’t keep those prisoners forever,” Marianne continued. “Too expensive. They’ll need them to get back to work.”
“But I like Herr Muller,” Fritz said petulantly. “I don’t want him to be released.”
Elisabeth shot her brother a look. “Do you hear what you’re saying? You sound like Rapunzel’s stepmother. If you like someone, you should want them to be free.”
The next week, a heat wave settled over Burg Lingenfels, a shaggy animal brushing against the hills, panting along the river, quieting the birds and making the castle sweat. The ditches were alive with milkweed, nettles, and creeping phlox. In the warmth, the forest looked soft and dense, a black lump against blue sky.