during the three days since her return to Westphalia. She’s looked from the bedroom window, from the hallway, hoping to steal some glimpse of him, but her luck has turned, it seems. Or else luck has nothing to do with it. Maybe Nurse confines Johann strictly outside the potential arc of Elfriede’s gaze, on her own initiative or someone else’s. The aunts. Elfriede’s sisters-in-law, Ulrika, who’s married to the owner of a neighboring estate, and Helga, who still lives under her brother’s roof, a maiden.
Still, her son’s heart beats in her chest. She carries his image inside her skin. She calls his name now, stepping off the terrace to the darkened paths of the formal gardens, the parterres, the silent fountain, the alleys of linden and so on, searching each shadow for a flash of white, reflecting the half-moon. Listening for any rustle of fine gravel, any crackle of fallen leaves, any panting young breath. Anything she can hear above the thunder of her own terrified heart, that is. Surely he could not have gone so far as the lake.
Though she hasn’t yet noticed the chill, this October morning is brittle with it. Spreading from the northeast, from the Baltic, from the Russian plains where the weather has already turned to autumn. Elfriede’s hands and cheeks, if she cares to touch them, will prove icy. But she doesn’t care. She has room in her head for only one thought. Only one sensation. Not fear, or terror or even panic—none of those words quite describes her state of mind, when she considers the possibility of Johann losing his way and wandering into the dark woods, or trundling down the dock to fall into the lake, even merely tripping on a stone and cutting his fat knee. The idea of his blood, she cannot fathom it. She cannot bear it.
Johann.
Johann.
Where are you?
In the cold air she doesn’t notice, her words carry far and clear. After each call, she cants her head and sharpens her ears and listens, listens. But there’s no answer, no small voice in the void. That half-moon sits behind a cloud now. It doesn’t reveal much, just silvers the leaves and the stones, lightens the shadows from black to charcoal, so you see an obstacle in the instant before you run into it. Elfriede reaches the stone steps that end in the lake. In summer, a flat-bottomed boat would be tied to the mooring at the bottom of these steps, where the water’s shallow. In summer, you could also stroll along the lake’s edge where the water is deeper, where the bank’s made of civilized cut stone, and you could sit on this stone and dangle your legs into the lake to cool them. Or maybe fish, if you brought your pole. Picnic. Gerhard enjoyed swimming. He’d dive in and stroke all the way across to the opposite bank and back again, to maintain a healthy physical fitness. But summer’s gone, autumn has arrived, the sun’s busy warming some southern part of the globe. The half-moon drizzles a little light on the lake’s surface, and that’s all there is to tell you a lake exists there at all. If you weren’t expecting water, you might not even notice. Might simply walk off the edge, into the cold, black nothing.
Elfriede steps off the last stair and strides out into the shallows. She cups her hands around her mouth.
Johann.
Johann, please!
It’s your mother, Johann.
It’s Mama.
Where
are
you?
An echo floats back to her. Elfriede’s own words, turned against her. Now she discovers the cold and starts to shiver. She thinks, maybe he went back to the house already, maybe he wasn’t outside to begin with. Maybe I imagined him in the moonlight, in the lamplight from the window. Maybe it was a ghost, a little boy who died a hundred years ago, a wee unfortunate von Kleist who caught typhoid or something.
Elfriede tells herself to be sensible. There would be ripples, surely, there would be some natural commotion. A sturdy little boy could not just fall into a lake without a fuss.
You have imagined all this.
You haven’t slept, you’re exhausted, your mind is playing tricks.
You’re made of nerves right now.
You’re a fool.
What the hell does it matter, you don’t even know him. He doesn’t know you. He probably thinks Nurse is his mother. Probably calls her mama. Probably—
A tiny sob.
Elfriede whips around and listens. Made of nerves. No, not nerves: one giant nerve, quivering, straining for sensation.
The wavelets trickle behind her. She’s afraid to move,