As she stands there, an old woman looking up at old Victory, a pigeon will alight on Victory’s shoulder, ruffle its feathers, and settle down as if to sleep.
Though it is cold, Lina will stand with Victory for a long time, until the square has emptied, waiting for darkness and the sight of the night’s first stars.
They had dwelt always in that mystery, she and William. He had led her there. That, at least, had never changed.
TWO Moon
On a cold morning in early spring, the Herschel family gathers in the courtyard with the wooden bucket and the broom and the bantams and the evil Hamburg rooster, who eyes Lina from his perch atop the bench by the door and rushes to peck her feet, if given the chance. The thaw has begun, but the air is bitterly damp. In the courtyard, a shelf of wet brown smoke hovers. That morning, a fat black cinder dropped onto the stones at Lina’s feet. When she touched it with the toe of her boot, it fell apart to expose its glowing heart, bright against the gray stones.
It is three years since the earthquake; Lina is eight years old. Sometimes this winter she has been allowed to go by herself to stand bundled up on the wall of the Stadtgraben in the early evening dusk, watching the other children dart over the frozen ditches on their skates. The air smells of snow and of the tangle of frozen rushes hanging on at the edge of the Leinestrom, of the icy fields beyond, of the cloud breath from the horses pulling sleighs. When she puts her hands over her cheeks to keep them warm, the smell of the courtyard smoke clings to the damp wool of her mittens.
She is often ill, and she is not allowed to skate, as the boys are. She is considered too weak for sport or gaiety, though not for work about the house.
In the courtyard now, as she waits with her father and brothers and Sophia, her feet ache. The cold air stings her nose, and the smoke makes her throat burn and her eyes stream. Inside the stable attached to the courtyard, the horse strikes the wall of his stall with his hoof, making his lonely, prisoner sound, which is what he does when he is bored. He stops for a moment and then begins again, rhythmically knocking. When Lina cleans his stall, she crouches under the roof of his belly with the long hair and puts her ear to the shining pile of his thick coat, listening to the rumbling business inside him. He stands planted as if his feet are made of stone, and she strokes his silky legs. William has taught her the secret way to run her fingers down the horse’s fetlock, so that he will lift his heavy hoof for her as if it were magically light as air.
It is rare that all the Herschel siblings are together, but William has organized them for this important occasion. He has dragged a wooden tub into the center of the courtyard and filled it from the well. Sophia, her hair in a long plait wound around her head in a new, adult way, is very pretty. She has been away for several months, helping their uncle at his farm and vineyard, caring for their little cousins since their mother’s death. When Sophia has undressed in their old bedroom on the last two nights, Lina has stolen glances at the pear-shaped weights of Sophia’s breasts, the speckled vee of wiry hair between her legs, the cello shape of her hips and her waist. It seems impossible to Lina that she will ever grow up to look as Sophia does.
William stands next to their father. Beside their father’s aspect of ill health — his sunken cheeks and dull skin and damp hairline — William, at nineteen, seems like a different creature altogether. When he picks her up and lifts her to his shoulders, she feels the strength in his arms. William’s heart, she thinks, is big like the horse’s heart.
Alexander is beside William, holding little Dietrich by the hand. Alexander, who is twelve, admires William, as Lina and their father do. She feels jealous of Alexander that he can go anywhere with William, while she must stay at home. But Alexander is good to her, at least. He shows her fingerings on his violin. He helps her in the kitchen when their mother does not see.
Bad, dark-faced Jacob prowls the perimeter, scowling and dragging his feet. The day before he had wrenched her arm because of his knife being unclean at dinner, though she could see nothing on it. Her father had intervened, going to his chair by the fire afterward, his hand over his eyes.
“They should’ve drowned you in a bucket,” Jacob had told her.
“That’s enough,” their father had said from his chair. “For pity’s sake.”
Later that evening, when William went outside, Lina had followed him.
She’d stood before him where he sat on the bench, looking up at the stars. He’d had a book with him.
“Jacob wishes I were dead,” she had said.
William had put aside his book. He’d held out his hand and pulled her down beside him on the bench.
“Look up,” he’d said. “Aren’t the stars beautiful?”
She hadn’t said anything.
“Jacob has an ugly thing crouching inside him,” William had said. “I told you not to look at him.”
“I can’t not look at him,” she’d said, and even as she said it, she’d felt the way Jacob’s presence in a room made her heart race. He seems to compel her to look at him.
“My eyes go there,” she’d said.
William had said nothing further, his gaze on the stars.
“He is the oldest,” she’d said. “He should know better.”
“You will not change him,” William had said. “Make your mind think of other things.”
Lina had leaned against him.
“Look,” William had said again, nudging her with his shoulder. “Did you ever see anything as beautiful as the stars?”
—
TODAY WILLIAM HAS BEEN PREPARING for what he calls the surprise. They have been told by William that they cannot look at the tub yet, that to look directly at the sun’s reflection in the water is impossible. It is too bright for their eyes. He will tell them when it is safe to look. There is a feeling of strangeness, even dread in the air. The horse knocks and knocks in his cell. Birds fly back and forth in restless flocks, settling for a moment and then lifting off again in inky swarms that swerve across the sky. Lina cannot help herself and glances at the tub, but she sees only wavering shapes on the water’s swaying surface, a bright flash.
She presses closer to William. She is happy that their mother has not joined them outside this morning. Yet alongside her happiness at being near William, her anticipation of what will take place in the tub, is her pity for their servant girl, Hilda. They have had to leave Hilda weeping inside the house, for their mother forbade her to join them. Their mother cannot be responsible for their father’s and William’s madness, she says, and she will need someone’s help, if the event that William says will come to pass truly occurs. Hilda is better than nothing.
Their mother is furious that none of them will stay with her.
“An eclipse puts you in no danger, Mama,” William had told her, but she only sat rocking by the fire, her hand on her heart, and would not look at any of them.
Hilda had come to their household at their mother’s insistence when Dietrich was born, even though their mother says all the time that they cannot afford her and that she eats too much. She is a slow-moving and slow-thinking girl with a cowlick in her yellow hair and a flat, low forehead and a smell like chicken soup under her arms. She took Sophia’s place beside Lina in the girls’ bed. Hilda likes to tickle. At night Lina lies stiffly, steeling herself against the creeping surprise of Hilda’s fingers. Hilda is a relaxed sleeper, full of grand gestures, chuckling and muttering and farting and flinging her fat arms and legs. Yet often when Lina wakes, she is curled up against Hilda’s warm side, a bit of the big girl’s nightdress in her fist. Sometimes she wakes to find Hilda’s soft, heavy thigh thrown over hers, or Hilda’s arm draped over Lina’s waist. Lina lies transfixed then, lifting a hand to touch Hilda’s gold-colored hair, the spray of her braids coming unwound at night like hay from a stook.