“It is Mutter’s drawing, and here’s mine,” said Franz, so Moritz pushed in front of his big brother to show his own work.
“But what was it a painting of?” asked Dirk. “I couldn’t see.”
“Oh, something,” replied Franz, “or something else.”
28.
Several mornings after this, Dirk approached the small salon where Herr Pfeiffer oversaw the affairs of his household and his trade. The door was halfway open. Dirk paused, not to eavesdrop but to wait for an acceptable moment to enter.
“But you’ve taken in another hobbled goose, I hear.” A woman’s tones, arresting to Dirk because they didn’t sound like anything he’d ever heard before. It reminded him of his first exposure to the voice of the ’cello. Hers was a pearly instrument that made of workaday German something more velveteen, throaty. What she said, the way she put things. Emphases, sudden diminuendos. “I’ve seen him, you know. He wears a mark of the woods.”
“He’ll do just fine here. Trust me on this. He’s not a local boy.”
“I can tell that. Is he altogether put together?”
“He’s a good lad, and no known family. Don’t fuss about it.”
“Well.” There was a silence and the sound of fingers drumming on a tabletop. “I am trying to ask you your business with this boy.”
“Ah, Nastaran. He is taking over the duties of the lad who had to leave to tend to his grandfather in the Thurgau.”
“But sleeping here in our own home? Is that proper? Are our affairs to be public property?”
“The past assistants were all local, as you know very well. They all had plenty of scope for backstairs chatter if they’d been inclined. But they weren’t, and this one isn’t either, I can tell. Now, were you here to ask for more supplies?” The husband’s voice tired and consoling. “I will get you what you need.”
“You can’t give me what I need.” Oh, the ’cello in that sentence. “But you can get me a pot of blue the next time you are in Munich. I’d welcome that.”
“What shade?”
The silence went on for so long that Dirk began to inch backward. Then she said, “I want the sky, Gerwig. Either you know the color of the sky or you don’t.”
“You should rely on it that I don’t, my love. Give me a sample of cloth or paper and I’ll see if I can match it. I’ll undoubtedly get it wrong, but perhaps not so wrong as to cause offense.”
She was up and through the door so quickly that she’d have bumped into Dirk had he not retreated. All he saw was an ebbing of dress material on the bottom step before his eye could really focus. She rose out of sight as if in an updraft. He waited a moment and then approached the chamber, rapping lightly.
“Oh, you just missed the Frau. She is longing to meet you,” said Pfeiffer, peaceably enough.
“I’m surprised not to have had the pleasure yet.”
“Oh, well, pleasure.” The husband was ruminative, riffling some papers. “She is a retiring type, the Frau Pfeiffer. I can tell she will come forward soon. She isn’t used to having someone else live in the house. Our previous help has always come from nearby, and left in the evenings.”
“I don’t enter the barn. But in the house you haven’t told me what rooms to avoid, if she doesn’t care for company.”
“She’ll do the avoiding, never fear.” But he relented. “She’s from a different tradition. She will have nothing against you, but your lack of connection with anyone we know personally will take some time for her to overcome. In her society, she wouldn’t have generally met someone like you.” He sighed, and added almost under his breath, “Or me.”
“I am uncertain . . .”
“She keeps to the garden and her own chamber, across the hall from mine.” He looked up under his bushy brows. “You’ll have deduced that we accommodate Frau Pfeiffer. I’m sure at your age you know what relations between a man and a woman are.”
“Oh, I’m not questioning—and, no, I’m hardly in the situation—”
He laughed. “Well, if you don’t, you will soon enough. It helps keep the peace that the Frau and I should retire to separate sleeping chambers. But don’t worry about affection. I’m devoted to her, and always will be.”
“It’s hardly my place—”
Gerwig Pfeiffer stopped humming. “You’re quite right. Let’s to this day’s lesson in availabilities of glue, shall we? There are three sorts we use, depending both on the wetness of the atmosphere and the quality of the rag content we’ve boiled up. See here.” They bent over their work. Upstairs, a door slammed, once, then twice more, as if practicing outrage.
29.
The next morning Herr Pfeiffer had to be out to meet a steamship arriving with a shipment of rags. It was a drizzly day, and the boys were cross to be kept inside. Dirk hunted about the nursery for something to entertain them. He discovered a stack of woodcut prints. They’d been discarded from some printing job, probably for misalignment, as they all tilted at the same angle. The boys had used charcoal crayon on some of them. Dirk selected an image of a man beating a donkey. He cut the page up into fourteen or fifteen segments and shuffled them. “Now you are to put it back into the right form,” he told them.
“I wonder if the donkey will have run away,” said Moritz.
“How could he do that?” asked Franz.
“Dirk’s scissors have cut through the harness.”
The boys weren’t much amused by the puzzle, but they dallied and fought over it. The pieces of paper got gummy and stuck to their fingertips. It was a bit of a disaster.
Then a voice from across the utility courtyard: Frau Pfeiffer calling for assistance. Her tone was even. Moritz rose to go, but Franz was bigger and spilled him on the floor to get by. The older brother ran upstairs at once—a covered bridge-way spanned the courtyard on the third level, so those on high floors in either building wouldn’t need to go down and up so many stairs.
Moritz was sulking when Franz returned, carrying a small clay flask with a wide neck. “Mutter would like you to open this, if you can.”
He took it. Something heavy and liquid inside. The mouth of the jug had been covered with a square of cheesecloth. Wax had been melted across the top to keep the vessel secured and, perhaps, the liquid from spilling over or drying out or spoiling. “What is it, do you know?”
“Paint, I think. But I don’t know the color.”
Dirk tried to wrestle the wax off, but it had hardened to stone. He pulled the leatherfold out of his pocket and unwrapped his gnome-head knife, and he set to work carving chunks of wax off the edge.
“Let me,” said Moritz. “Franz got to bring the paint. It’s my turn.”
“I’m bigger,” said Franz. “You’d only stab yourself.”
Dirk wouldn’t hear of it. “It’s not a very sharp knife, but it’s sharp enough. It could slip. What does your mother use the paint for?”
“To paint with,” said Franz.”
“Well, think of that. I really meant: What does she paint?” His hand slipped and a short line of crimson showed up along the edge of his thumb.