Now there were some who said that a shower of rain intervened just as the Red Cross Center dissolved in flames, saving the cathedral, saving the rest of Nassau. I don’t remember that. In the spray of water from the hoses, in the general running about, the bang and crumble of buildings under dynamite, one by one, and most of all the gnawing panic over Thorpe—where was he, where had he gone—I didn’t notice the weather. I noticed how, in the first hint of dawn, the whole world seemed to smolder and steam, and yet the cathedral still stood, the cross reached up to heaven against a charcoal horizon. And the flames were gone.

By the time Thorpe reappeared in Nassau a week later, as if by magic, I already understood the obvious. That he had opened up my desk during the night of the Bay Street riot, as I slept away the effects of losing a pint or two of blood on a shard of window glass. That he had copied out the contents of the folded papers I kept in a special compartment at the back of the drawer, and replaced them without the slightest sign they’d been disturbed at all.

For the record, I didn’t hold it against him.

Elfriede

August 1905

(Berlin)

Daily they walk in the Tiergarten, Elfriede and Johann, because of course he must have fresh air and exercise, and so must she. Grief like this, you need something to do. Today the weather’s not so good, but still they venture out, carrying umbrellas as a precaution, or else a talisman against actual rain. (Rain mostly falls when you’ve forgotten your umbrella, isn’t that right?)

The Diet is in recess for the summer holidays, and the windows of the Reichstag wear an aspect of abandonment. Johann kicks at the gravel. Who can blame him? No friends, no family. No ponies to ride, no tennis, no woods to explore. Just a boy and his mother in the corrupt city, the hustle bustle of Berlin. Waiting for their luck to turn.

“Maybe we could visit the animals in the zoo today,” Elfriede says.

“Maybe.” Johann kicks some more gravel. He’s a tall boy, a big boy, husky like his father. He outgrows his clothes almost as soon as they’re on him. That jacket he’s wearing, the one she bought him in Rotterdam because his old jacket, the one she bought him for Easter in Florida, was ruined by the salt spray on the ship? She’ll be damned if the shoulders aren’t already straining when he leans forward to grip the handlebars of a bicycle.

“We could walk,” Elfriede says. “It’s a long walk, but that’s good exercise.”

“All right.”