The Ragged Edge of Night by Olivia Hawker

Author:Olivia Hawker [Hawker, Olivia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: War
ISBN: 9781503900905
Google: Zf3hswEACAAJ
Amazon: 1503900908
Goodreads: 37759099
Publisher: Amazon Publishing
Published: 2018-10-01T23:00:00+00:00

PART 4

DEATH HAS ONE EYE

OCTOBER 1943–APRIL 1944

19

Fall crisps the air again, leading in the winter. How has a year passed so swiftly? Woodsmoke hangs in the orchard, a blue haze caught among the dry, rattling leaves that still cling to the branches. It’s almost too cool now to dry the washing outdoors, but Elisabeth persists. She likes it when the scent of autumn smoke works itself into her dresses and old, threadbare jumpers. She has told Anton so, and now he has come to associate the smell of the season with his wife. The autumn is like Elisabeth—solemn, austere, a touch chilly, but not without its flashes of brilliant color.

Anton rests on the cottage’s lowermost step, transferring his pipe from one hand to the other, watching Elisabeth hang up her clothes. Every article is spaced along the drying line at precisely the right distance. Nothing is crowded, and not a hand’s width of line goes unused. She bends to her laundry basket, lifts a damp dress, and pins it to the line with a casual grace she doesn’t even know she possesses.

When she pauses in her work—every time she rests—Elisabeth’s eyes wander up to the peak of the cottage roof. Still, she is thinking of the tiny attic space, the unused void above her family’s heads. Still, she wonders. There are those in Unterboihingen who would call Elisabeth cold, but Anton knows she is not—not where it matters most, in the center of her soul.

When she has hung the last garment on the line, Elisabeth wanders to the stairs with her laundry basket balanced on her hip. She lets the basket fall to the dry golden grass and then lowers herself to the step beside Anton, sighing.

“You know I don’t like it when you smoke that thing.”

“I know.” He puffs and grins at her, teasing.

“I suppose I can’t complain, though, after the wonders you’ve worked with Maria.”

Anton has convinced the girl not only to attend school daily but to maintain her best behavior, too. He still can’t credit his own achievement. When he looks back on the complex web of scolding, religious lectures, and bribery—largely involving old magazines, which Maria may use for her paper dolls—the route to his daughter’s reform makes him quite dizzy.

“I don’t suppose Maria’s teacher has had any cause to complain recently,” Anton says, cautious.

“Not a bit. She seems quite satisfied with Maria’s behavior. So you may smoke away, as far as I’m concerned.”

The boys’ shouts carry, thin and distant, across the pasture. Anton and Elisabeth turn to watch as Paul and Albert scramble through knee-high dull-yellow grass. The two white goats leap away from the boys and run to the farthest corner of the field. The sun will set soon; the goats must be penned in before dark, bedded down with the milk cow in the stone foundation of the cottage.

“One would think those boys would have learned how to manage goats by now,” Elisabeth says. “They’ll never catch them by chasing.”

“They’re only playing. The good Lord knows, it’s no easy feat to find some fun nowadays.

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