up? So I let it go on. I told myself that she loved him and I didn’t, she could please him that way and I couldn’t. She might as well have his nights. I had his days, after all. He was always attentive to me, always affectionate.”
Wilfred throws himself back on the ground beside her and stares at the sky. “Like brother and sister.”
“Yes.”
“Always?”
“Yes.”
Wilfred turns his head toward her, while the cigarette hangs from the corner of his mouth. He stares at her intently, without embarrassment. “Oh, my dear love.”
“There was this time, about a year after Frederica was born. I went into the study, Gerhard’s study, on some household matter. I forgot to knock. I mean, why should I knock? I’m his wife. Anyway, she was there, Charlotte was there, and they were . . . they sat together on a chair, you see, her dress was open in front, her hair was down, she was on top of him. They didn’t even notice I was there. I stood there in the doorway and I could only think, It’s Wednesday afternoon, by God, a Wednesday afternoon. How dare they. Hadn’t they got enough the night before?” Elfriede cackles. “I realized in that moment how much he was in love with her, not with me. I was invisible to them.”
“Elfriede—”
“Oh, I know it was stupid. When there was no possibility of even seeing you again. When we are all just flesh and blood. And the months passed, the years passed, and it wasn’t as if I wanted you any less, or wanted Gerhard at all. But you weren’t there, you weren’t real, you were an idea, a memory, a heartbeat, a stack of letters, and Gerhard was real. And I loved him, not as a lover maybe, but still I cared for him, and I’d lost him. I would hear him coming back into his room at dawn, I would wake up and hear the bed creak as he got into it, pretending to have slept there all night, while I lay there burning, my God, just to be touched again, maybe not by him, but to be touched—”
“Elfriede.” Wilfred lifts himself up and crashes down next to her. One long arm takes her by the shoulders and guides her home. His shirt, her Cloth of Tears.
In the afternoon, Charlotte returns. Hangs up her hat on the hook in the hallway and gapes in amazement at the fellow in the parlor, before retiring to her room for a nap.
Dinner’s a failure. It’s too hot and everyone’s out of sorts. Wilfred makes this valiant effort to keep conversation going, and his natural charm nearly succeeds. But the awkwardness of it all. The children, scrubbed and dressed and fretful. Johann, whose natural interest in this brave British soldier turned into suspicion when he came running into the garden with his arithmetic lesson and found his mother and Mr. Thorpe lying together against the orange tree. Mama, why are you crying? he asked, and Elfriede, scrambling to her feet, wiping her hair and eyes, said desperately, wanting to soothe his fears, Because I’m happy, darling. Johann’s worried, confused eyes then rose to find Wilfred, who had released Elfriede by now. But it was too late. The light of worship had already faded from Johann’s eyes. Johann, who had looked upon his father as a hero among heroes, who had suffered so deeply and tearlessly as the peritonitis did its work, was not too young to realize what had transpired under the orange tree. Because I’m happy, darling. Stupid Elfriede. Didn’t she know that a little boy doesn’t want his mother to be happy in a strange man’s arms? The last possible thing.
Elfriede tries to liven things up after dessert. She puts a record on the phonograph, some dance hall music, and Wilfred asks Charlotte to do a two-step around the living room. They’re both excellent dancers, and the room is large. Well, the whole house is large. Large and commodious. Elfriede’s a wealthy woman, after all, a baron’s widow, a baron’s mother. She’s rented the house for an entire year from some wealthy magnate from Chicago or Cleveland or Pittsburgh, she can’t remember now, one of those American cities that churn out millionaires like sausages. (Also like sausage, you didn’t necessarily want to know how the millions were made.) At any rate, it’s a handsome, well-proportioned house, containing a multitude of airy rooms that still manage to heat like ovens on a day