Master Butchers Singing Club Read online

  “It’s pretty,” she said, “what is it, a ring?”

  “Yes,” he said, his voice cracking a little, his anger changing all of a sudden to a longing so precise and painful he felt his heart squeezing, hot, in his chest, as though her initials were branded on it. The skin on his face prickled and he wanted to throw himself at her feet. She looked up at him from where she sat in the chair, the little box in her lap, and her foxlike face blazed in the light of candles. The flames jumped in her eyes and her hair sprang out in a dim aureole from her warm, flushed cheeks—she smiled at him but it wasn’t the smile he wanted, it was a weary sort of smile. He sagged a bit against the entrance and looked down at his feet.

  As for Delphine, sitting there in the flare of Cyprian’s hopeful candles with the ring box in her lap, she thought back to their balancing act. The secretive light sent her into a strange, reflective, obstinate mood. Again, she saw herself walk out before the crowd in her long red skirt. There was the tea tray, set on her torso. She became the human table. Only in her mind, instead of chairs one by one men came out and balanced on her flint hard stomach. A stack of boys and men. Cyprian and Fidelis. The twins, Emil and Erich. Then Franz, and Markus, at last her father. All were precariously balanced on her phenomenally tough midsection. And she was down there, thinking what thoughts, feeling what feelings? What could she say? One word and they all might topple. One word could throw them off. So she didn’t say anything, but her arms and legs started to shake.

  “Delphine,” said Cyprian, quietly now, his voice neutral and impassive, “why don’t you just go to bed?”

  But she was still looking down at the little box. She was staring at it as though she could see through the wrappings into the velvet case. So he picked it up out of her lap, put it back in his pocket, and left her.

  * * *

  CYPRIAN GOT INTO THE CAR, sat for a moment gathering his thoughts and then he started the car up violently and roared down the road into town. He felt slightly better as he entered the pool hall, and much better as he made himself exquisitely drunk. He left the pool hall in the blackness before dawn, already feeling the whiskey fade. Immediately, he drove to the house of Delphine’s friend, Clarisse. He knocked too loudly, pounded really, with a drunken indignation.

  Clarisse jumped off the couch where she was sleeping, ran to the door to shut up the racket. She opened the door suspiciously, blinking sleep from her eyes. She was wearing a flimsy gown in which she seemed quite bitterly cold. Her usually rosy face was pale, her lips almost blue. Shivering, she let him in. There was a large, packed suitcase on a mat next to the door, and a smart red hatbox sitting on a chair. While he stomped his feet and rubbed his hands, she took her time, walked away from him, as if she didn’t know he could see her ass and legs through the thin pink material. She picked up a fluffy blue blanket from her sofa, but didn’t wrap it around herself until she’d passed from his sight.

  “Come on in,” she said, beckoning him toward the kitchen. He sat down at her table. Suddenly, she seemed all recovered—toasty looking. Her cheeks glowed and her curls gleamed. She spun around holding the blanket on with one hand. She said she’d make him some coffee. Once she prepared the coffeepot and left it to boil, she sat across from him, rubbed her eyes with soft little kitten fists. Yawning pertly, shaking her head as if to clear it, but really making her curls bounce charmingly, she said, her voice a dreamy pout, “So, what is it?”

  “Merry Christmas,” he said as he slowly pushed, across her kitchen table, the tiny green box.

  THE CRATE FROM GERMANY, which the boys had waited until Christmas to open, contained extraordinary things. For Franz, there was a coat made of top-grade wool, beautifully sewn and lined with the heavy sort of satin Fidelis remembered from his youth. The boys each had a pair of leather boots, and the boots fit, thanks to Tante, who had kept her mother updated as to the boys’ sizes in her letters. There were small things—carved and brilliantly painted tops, the books Max und Moritz and Der Struwwelpeter, and small horses with legs that moved. For the twins, vast regiments of soldiers in every pose and their equipment, too. For Markus, a thick hat and knitted sweater. Tante received an embroidered shawl, which she pretended was a scarf. A shawl was an old person’s gift. Fidelis, a meerschaum pipe and Turkish tobacco. Everything was packed in great wads of worthless old reichsmarks—a trillion to the dollar. On the top, there were a few precious newspapers which Fidelis and Tante fought over good-naturedly as they ate their burnt cookies and sweet stollen and drank cups of strong coffee.

  After everything was opened and the songs were sung, after the candles were put out and the boys were immersed in playing with their gifts, Tante and Fidelis continued to sit together. They talked about how well their family was doing, at last, back in the old town. Pictures bloomed in their minds, and they looked silently into the air, half smiling. They remembered the brick shop building that their father’s father had built, with the stone rosettes placed under the eaves. Three stories, it was.

  Here in North Dakota, the Deutsche Freie Presse or Die Rundschau very cautiously reflected general news from Germany. So it was good to get the local doings and goings on from an actual German paper in which people were named whom they both knew. Births, deaths, weddings. They started reading aloud to each other. Fidelis drew on the pipe, filled his mouth with the rich dark sweetness of the tobacco. He wondered if they could get together enough money, soon, to go back there to visit. Tante hid her sudden alertness and only mentioned, casually, that she thought it would be good for the boys to see their grandparents, see the way real Germans did things, stay for a few months, even, so they’d be able to speak the language later on.

  Fidelis turned his massive head toward her, looked right through her with his hollow blue gaze. He knew what she was doing, all right, but he also knew that there was something in what she said. The boys were not being raised as he had been—no discipline, very little learning, and a wild sense of entitlement to freedoms that he never thought existed. And even now, they could not always understand him when he spoke at length in his language, and he could not match the fluency of their English. When he overcame his reticence to talk to them at all, and tried to speak, nothing he said came out right. Nothing they answered made much sense. He couldn’t keep track of their doings, nor buy for them the things they needed, nor keep them from getting into trouble and falling sick. It would be better if he had a wife, he knew that. But there was nobody for him. At least no one available. Sometimes when Delphine turned to look at him, boldly, her golden eyes held a meaning he didn’t dare read. Nor could he bring himself to examine the cipher of his own attraction to her. After all, she was taken. She belonged to Cyprian, the man who had saved his son.

  “WHAT THE HELL is wrong with me?” Delphine asked herself on Christmas morning, ashamed to remember how she’d treated Cyprian the night before. “Maybe,” she amended, eating an oatmeal cookie as she sat before the tree, “nothing’s so very wrong. I’m just fed up.”

  It was partly the fault of the Christmas tree—strung with long loops of popcorn and cranberries, tiny stars cut from tin and painted green and gold, paper angels with cottony down wings, frosted milkweed pods, twigs dipped in silver paint. The tree was very beautiful, loaded with these tiny decorations, and even without the candles flaring and although the morning light was stark and reflected a white sky, the charms of the decorated tree were so calming and reassuring that she found herself falling before it into a serene meditation. She had watched it last night, too, and had offended Cyprian.

  She ate the corner of another cookie, her breakfast. The irritation that had flooded her the night before shamed her now that she could see what painstaking preparations Cyprian had made. She gestured at the tree with a piece of the cookie. “I should love him, right? That’s the message of the tree. But last night I was tired. Just tired of trying so hard. I guess this is what happens when you just don’t love somebody. Is it my fault?” The rest of the cookie went into her mouth. S
he chewed it up.

  “You end up talking to a damn tree, that’s what.”

  Delphine jumped up in gathered energy and dressed herself quickly, warmly. She bundled on her coat and boots and made ready to walk into town with her gift for Clarisse—a pair of expensive silk stockings. Delphine knew how much Clarisse liked having fancy stockings and showing off her pretty legs. She thought herself clever, too, for wrapping the stockings in a flowered head scarf and using a hair ribbon to tie the package, not that Clarisse often wore a childish hair ribbon. Maybe she could trim something with it, though. Damping down the fire, Delphine prepared to leave. She left the key over the door lintel, for Cyprian and Roy. One or another of them would probably beat her back home, she thought, ready to eat a late Christmas dinner.

  CLARISSE WASN’T HOME and her door was locked, but Delphine knew her friend kept an extra house key underneath an iron boot scraper. Sure enough, Delphine rocked the heavy thing aside and drew the key from beneath it. She let herself into Clarisse’s house through the rattly glass-paned back door, into a tiny mud porch. The porch, littered with boots and newspapers, led into the kitchen, always much tidier than Clarisse’s other rooms. That her friend might be sleeping late occurred to Delphine as she entered, and so she called out from the kitchen. Then she walked over to the stairway that led up to her friend’s bedroom, and called from the bottom step. No answer. She thought of walking upstairs, but that seemed presumptuous, even though at one time she’d had the casual run of Clarisse’s house. I’ll just leave the gift on the table, thought Delphine, maybe write a note to go with it.

  She put the package on the white painted surface of the kitchen table, and was rummaging in her pocketbook for a pencil and a bit of paper, when she saw something that arrested her attention. A small box lay opened on the kitchen table, its candy-striped ribbon flung aside. A small wad of cotton batting lay tumbled from it next to the sugar bowl. Something about the box was immediately upsetting. She stared at it until she realized that it was the same green-and-red box that Cyprian had tried to give her. Just the same, down to the candy-striped ribbon. Whatever it had held—a ring, she’d guessed—was gone of course. There was just the box lying on the tabletop, spilled open. Delphine eyed it for a moment, and then thoughtfully hefted the gift she’d brought Clarisse, as though all of a sudden it weighed a great deal.

  Walking out, Delphine locked the flimsy door and replaced the key underneath the boot scraper. Making her way through the back lot into the alley, she saw the car that she shared with Cyprian—the DeSoto. The car was parked to one side of the alley and covered with a new, frail dusting of snow. All was white, all was still. Up and down the block, nothing moved. A holiday inwardness, a sweet pause had gripped the houses. Plumes of smoke poured from the chimneys, and the windows were icily blank. Delphine drew from a corner of her pocketbook her few keys, which she kept on a little brass ring. She unlocked the car door, got into the cold car, pumped the starter button with her foot. Then she drove out of town, back up the farm road, and parked the car where it could be seen by anyone who passed.

  Inside the house again, she shook snow off her coat and draped it across an armchair, set her boots neatly beside the door. She tossed the gift for Clarisse back underneath the tree. In the kitchen, she built up the fire in the stove and warmed her hands while she waited for her tea to boil. As she turned her hands back and forth in the heat, she puzzled things out. There was only one thing to make of it, at last. Failing with her, Cyprian had driven to her best friend’s house last night and given her the ring. She nodded as she concluded this. Delphine poured herself a cup of tea, stirred in a dollop of honey, added a bit of thin cream, and went back to sit in the chair before the Christmas tree. What might it mean, she wondered, that the car had still been parked in the alley? A moment later, her face stained red with heat, embarrassment. It occurred to her that the car was still there because the two of them, Cyprian and Clarisse, had been, at the very moment Delphine had entered the house, upstairs in her best friend’s messy bedroom. Half asleep in Clarisse’s musty sheets. Waking to hear Delphine’s voice at the bottom of the stairs. She could practically see the expressions on their faces! And she could picture the relief when they heard her walk away. Her lip trembled. More than anything, Delphine hated feeling stupid. And then, quite suddenly, she laughed at herself.

  Wasn’t this the perfect solution, if she looked at it objectively? Wasn’t this exactly what she’d have wanted if she could have solved the impasse she and Cyprian had found themselves in the night before? She did not love Cyprian, and even though his sudden defection stunned her, it was definitely better that he found someone else. A burden had been lifted. She already felt lighter. The scene with the man in the park, he and Cyprian twining almost invisibly in the dark, flashed before her. If that happened, she thought, so be it. Certainly not her problem anymore. The situation even contained an element of its own revenge. Delphine knew herself well enough to understand that, contradictory though it was, she’d need to comfort herself occasionally with the thought of the difficulty that Clarisse faced in loving Cyprian Lazarre. And vice versa, she thought, too, recalling the red bead dress.

  CLARISSE ALWAYS LEFT out things that had more use in them. Carelessly packed in boxes, sacks, or tied in old skirts, they made a tumbled pile on her back porch. Step-and-a-Half was prompt and regular in her visits to gather what was left. Sometimes the castoffs were of a quality that she could sell, like the glitter dress all hung with red beads. She’d found the dress some time ago, wrapped with newspaper, tied with string. The dress had some dirt on it, as though it had been in the ground and dug up, of all things, but the garment was perfectly fine once Step-and-a-Half aired it out, picked away the grains of dirt, sponged down the fabric with a fine soap. Step-and-a-Half had got three dollars for the dress from a lady who came traveling through with her husband, a man who dealt in scrap metals. No, Clarisse had been a lucrative source, a discarder of valuable rubbish, although sometimes Step-and-a-Half wondered whether some of the things—the hats, the shoes, even items that Step-and-a-Half ended up using herself—might have belonged to the dead people Clarisse fixed up in Strub’s basement.

  Just after dawn, on the back porch, Step-and-a-Half found a trove. Pots, pans, a whole set of kitchenware, a very good carving knife. Step-and-a-Half gathered up her finds and brought them back to the little room behind her shop that she used for sorting her pickings. She scoured the knife clean and placed it among her own cooking implements. Then she went through the rest of the objects, frowning with critical attention and testing the strength of handles and weighing the heaviness of the pots in her hands. After she had decided what to do with all she’d found, Step-and-a-Half treated herself to a breakfast of chicken wings, a pile of hardtack, and a wrinkled carrot. As she chewed, she assessed the bolts of fabric that surrounded her—the calicos and broadcloth, the light and heavy woolens. She wanted to give a present to a person she thought deserved it.

  Once she’d finished her meal, Step-and-a-Half pulled forth a length of heavy cotton printed with stripes, but then shook her head and replaced it. She turned aside from the flowered prints altogether after a few moments of thoughtful attention. No, they weren’t at all right. The wools were better, warmer, for skirts. The linen would do for a blouse. That way the top could easily be washed, and the linens wore very well, she was told. She tested a heavy butter-colored fabric with the tips of her fingers, and then smiled at the texture of a very pale blue. This blue was the color of the palest sky on a cloudless November day, a watered blue just a shadow brighter than gray. And the subtle plaid in the brown woolen, just the slightest hint of gold and yellow in the blue and green weaving, would be perfect for Mazarine’s hair. She nodded, putting the fabrics on the broad table fitted with a yardstick tacked tightly to the near edge.

  The Christmas sun came bitter through the window, just a ray or two played across the frozen fronds of ice. The little potbellied stove cast out a steady heat from t
he tiny room just in back where Step-and-a-Half did her account books and wrote out new orders. For a collector of scraps and town remnants and discards, Step-and-a-Half had extremely fastidious personal habits. She was, in fact, the influence on Roy that had caused him to clean his jail cell the year before and effected such a surprising alteration in his standards. Around Step-and-a-Half, Roy had to blow his nose on a real handkerchief, wipe his lips on a real napkin, and excuse himself when he made rude noises. Fortunately, she herself was a snorer and used to vast sounds occurring in her sleep—the windows rattled in the store when they slept there, he on the floor and she in the little cot bed, but they dreamed in black unawareness.

  Step-and-a-Half lowered her eagle’s face to glare at the fine expanse of the cloth now. She adjusted the angle of the fabric just so, then hefted an extremely sharp pair of shears with painted black handles and made the first cut, which she followed with a steady concentration until she’d lopped off the perfect length. She folded the soft plaid wool, then measured and cut the two pastel linens. Last, in a kind of reckless gesture, she swore hard and swiped down, from a side shelf that featured her most luxurious materials, a figured midnight blue satin that she herself found irresistible. Every woman who spent any time at all in the shop, poring thoughtfully over fabrics, stopped before this fabulous satin and fantasized, she could see, herself in a gown made out of it. An evening gown—though where could it be worn, here, in this town? A nightgown, then. Something so warm and cool at once, so understated, so exquisite that fingers couldn’t help extending and stroking and figuring and then, with a regretful sigh, rejecting.

  Step-and-a-Half cut a dress length off quickly, before she could argue herself out of it. She laid it on the counter along with some colored threads, pursed her lips, set examples of buttons against the plaid and the linens, and added those along with the rest in a little bag. Lastly, she put some ribbons in. Hair ribbons for a girl. She wrapped the package up in plain brown kraft paper and thin string, then bundled on her coat. Pulled on a man’s fur-lined leather hat, mitts, slipped her feet into rough boots, and banged out the door with the package underneath one arm. She was muttering, irritated with herself for thinking of this much too late. If she’d only thought of it yesterday, she could have dropped it off in the cover and comfort of her favorite time of the night.