dinner, alone.”
“Do give a hint about the gift, Father,” Luba said.
“Well…it’s quite big.”
“I hope it’s an amethyst,” Agnessa said.
“It’s out in the far barn,” Father said.
The estate boasted a whole collection of barns: the near barn, in which we stored sacks of grain, the twenty-stall horse barn, the dairy barn, and the empty far barn.
Agnessa looked about to cry. “You know I dislike barns, darling.”
“Let’s blindfold her!” Luba said.
“It’s the manure,” Agnessa said, a damask napkin to one nostril. “I can smell it from the house.”
Father pulled the napkin from her hand, snapped it into a triangle like a bandit’s kerchief, and tied it around Agnessa’s eyes.
Luba ran to Agnessa and led her by the hand like a blind person. Agnessa clutched Tum-Tum to her chest as Luba led her toward the barns and we followed.
We walked in a group. Max was at my hip and he swayed in my arms, singing his favorite song, getting only about every third word right. It was a macabre little French nursery song Agnessa taught him about sailors at sea who decide to eat a little boy.
There was once a little boat
That never on the sea had sailed
Ahoy! Ahoy!
After five or six weeks rations began to wane
Ahoy! Ahoy!
The adults joined in and sang as we passed Agnessa’s hothouse and the wind delivered a waft of the lazy, sweet scent of peach. What a pretty, glass-paned hothouse orangery it was, sent from Paris, the top edged in white scalloped metal; inside, even in autumn, the dwarf lemon trees were heavy with fruit. I cherished my time there under glass, little Max playing at my feet as I repotted plants and grafted roots, the watery breath of gardenias, Amazonian orchids, and Mr. Gardener’s roses clinging to the windows. I admired his white rose so much I propagated a whole shelf of individual plants from it, each with its root ball secured in a burlap bulb bag tied with twine.
“There isn’t anything I could possibly want out here,” Agnessa said, one hand feeling the air in front of her.
“Just relax,” I said.
Luba led Agnessa into the far barn, which no longer housed animals, but the smell of hay still lingered. Afon and I followed and he took my hand, our steps soft on cedar shavings. Father waved us in. Placed against one wall was a hulking, dull green metal box as tall and wide as a bull elk. It rumbled as if a small animal ran about inside it.
As we edged closer, Tum-Tum growled and Agnessa hugged him tighter.
Father took Agnessa’s hand and placed it on the metal.
“Tell me this instant, Ivan.”
He unknotted Agnessa’s blindfold.
She scowled, blinking in the low light. “Dear God, what is it?”
Luba stepped to the metal thing and opened the hinged door on the front. “Can you not tell? It’s an ice machine, Agnessa. It will make ice for you day and night.”
“Afon’s friend from the automobile club brought a generator to run it.”
Agnessa handed Tum-Tum to Father and stood still, mouth agape. “Holy Fathers. Oh, Ivan, once we return from Paris I can have all the parties I want.” She reached into the hole and ran her hands through the pale blue cubes. “And it’s the clear ice I like, darling, not the cloudy kind.”
Father kissed her cheek, a look of true love on his face. Hard as it was to deal with her sometimes, she made him happy.
Agnessa held two cubes in her palm, like a child at her name-day party, a few curls escaped from her upswept hair, as she went to each of us in turn, showing off her new gifts. She handed Max a cube, he stared at it in his palm and then dropped it to the cedar shavings with a shriek.
“Froid!” he said.
This sent us all into fits of laughter.
I held him close and felt his heart beat through his little vest. “Yes, it is very cold, my darling.”
“I am the luckiest woman on earth,” Agnessa said with a faraway smile, the cube forming a little puddle in her palm.
* * *
—
THE NEXT MORNING, I woke and nestled closer to Afon. He barely stirred as I pressed against him, my belly to his back, and felt his hip bone through his pajamas. How thin he’d become just from one week of a sore throat. Perhaps we could sneak away for a few hours alone before he left. Since Max’s birth he’d all but ignored me in that way, perhaps fearing I’d suffer another difficult birth.