Greta strapped this parcel to her chest with a long cotton shawl, leaving her hands free to carry a shovel. She allowed Saul to put an apple in her pocket, a crust of bread, and then she kissed the boys on the tops of their heads and walked into the forest, snapping small twigs beneath her feet.
She walked all day. In truth she had no notion of where she was going, what she was looking for. Occasionally she caught a hint of a song on the wind — naturally, she thought she was imagining it. But with no other guiding light to follow, she turned her ear to the sound and walked towards it. By noon she’d consumed the apple and tossed the skinny core beneath a bush. By nightfall she was curled up beneath a tree guarding the waxen infant with the curve of her body.
When the sun came up, Greta found herself in a small clearing full of light blue flowers. She couldn’t remember seeing them the night before, though of course it had been dark then, black shadows dripping down from the sky. Now she was covered in dew, her clothing wet and her hair hanging in damp strings. She blinked in the light and spent a moment rubbing color into her cheeks, cricking her back. There was a baby asleep beside her.
“I’m afraid not.”
Greta started at the voice but made an effort to retain her composure. A creature that sneaks up on you in the dead of the woods is usually only as dangerous as you make it. Keeping her body poised, she turned her neck to peer behind her. Some ten feet away, just outside the clearing, a man stood, leaning against a tree. He was bathed in shade, with only one leg peeking out into the full light. When he noticed this, the man pulled the leg back, turning his body monochromatic.
But Greta had seen the color of his suit, gray as the ashes from an old fire. Familiar.
“Do we know each other?” she asked.
“Perhaps.” The man turned so his spine lay against the tree and his weight rested on his heels. “We may have, once.”
He began to whistle, as though he had all the time in the world and this was the most ordinary interaction he could have dreamed up. Almost dull. But the sound sent a thrill through Greta’s body, her lungs constricting, heavy and cold.
“I’ve heard that song before,” she said.
“Well.” The man smiled at her, a half smile. “It’s not uncommon, is it? The kind of song you might hear at a pub.” He whistled another few bars. “Or a dance.”
A cool wind blew across the clearing, bending stalks of vegetation into sway-backed petitioners. Greta let her weight rest on one hand and listened to the familiar music rebound from rocks and trees. She hummed along, just a little. Remembering Saul’s hand in the concave of her back.
The body of her child lay tranquil beside her on its bed of flowers and grass. During the night the child’s skin had taken on a bluish hue — peaked, freezing — and, unthinking, Greta tried to warm her. Ran a finger over the small forehead, felt the cheeks with her palms. But the child didn’t stir. She just lay there, skin smudging slightly where it was touched.
Greta shivered. When she looked up, the sun had gone behind a cloud and the man was stooping right beside her. His hair was white blond, his eyes slightly lined, as if from squinting.
“Well,” he said again, nodding at the shovel. “Aren’t you going to get on with it?”
What could she do? What else was there to do? Accepting the hand the man held out to her — a clean hand, with trimmed nails and pink skin — Greta hauled herself to her feet and picked up the spade.
“I think,” the man said, “that anywhere around here will do.”
Greta’s shoulders heaved each time the shovel sliced the ground, calling forth a cold chink from the soil. She wanted a hole deep enough to muffle her own grief, if such a hole could be had. Soon she was standing in a pit up to her ankles, then her knees. The dirt grew cooler the deeper she went, a chill seeping out from the earth and into Greta’s skin. The man just watched, rocking back and forth on his heels.
“Although. ” Sweat dripped from every inch of her skin, but still, when the stranger spoke, Greta froze. She looked up to see him wearing a thoughtful expression. “It does seem like a shame.”
Greta waited. After a minute she asked, “What does?”
“Or a waste, really.” The man began strolling around the hole, his hands folded neatly behind his back. “A beautiful girl. A terrible tragedy.”
“I don’t know.” Greta looked at the small, still child and wanted with every fiber to be able to breathe her own life into that body. But what she said was “It happens all the time.”
The man wasn’t listening.
“And of course sons are nice, lovely really, but they’re not the same for a woman. I can see you holding a little girl in your arms. I can picture it.” The man sighed. “Oh, clearly. Very clearly.”
He walked over to the baby, lying in a bed of grass where Greta had left her. The blanket was wrapped tightly around the child, folds tucked cleverly under folds so that the whole package was as smooth as a pillowcase. Crouching on his heels, the stranger picked up the baby and cradled her in his elbow. Greta sucked in a breath. But what could he do that hadn’t already been done?
“Yes,” the man said. “I wonder if we don’t have something to offer one another, you and I.” He rose back up, still holding the bundle. “After all, I hate to see you so lonely.”
He stood at the lip of Greta’s hole and looked down at her. Her shoulders tightened.
“Because you are lonely, aren’t you?” he asked. “You have a little family. All those little men. But how happy can you be? With this?”
The man tilted his chin to the cold form of the baby.
“I can offer you the child you really want,” he continued. “The child you dream of. You do still dream of her, don’t you?” He smiled his thin smile again and nodded. “Often. Yes. It would be a good trade.”
In her half-dug grave, Greta’s ankles were freezing cold. She tried to call up an image of Andrzej’s face, then Fil’s, then Konrad’s. But she couldn’t.
“What do you mean, a trade?”
The man looked up into the distance as if calculating a very large number.
“I really dislike waste, you know. Can’t stand it. Everything has a use if you look for it. But most people don’t look, do they?”
Greta scowled. “You’re talking in riddles.”
“I am, aren’t I?” The stranger scratched his ear. “Please forgive me. It’s just that I get caught up in my own ideas and I forget what I have and haven’t said out loud. What I mean is very simple. You want a daughter, and you should have one. And she”—he looked now into Greta’s eyes with a frankness that seemed to fix her in place—“she should really have a daughter too. And her. And her.”
He moved the baby so that she lay with her face against his shoulder.
“I’m not sure I understand you,” said Greta. But the man was no longer paying any attention to her, caught up as he was in the details of his idea. He seemed to forget that he’d begged her forgiveness for this very sin not a moment ago.