“Yes, and so do the wives and children of all my men, as I said, and several of those men, those husbands and fathers, they’re dead, Elfriede, dead, gone, buried under white crosses in France, or hadn’t you heard? Tucked away in a nice, warm, dry house, plenty to eat, not a gun in sight. Hadn’t you heard there’s a fucking war on, darling?”

By the end of this speech, Wilfred’s voice roars out through the open window and shakes the trees outside. His elbows are locked, the cigarette burns from his right hand.

“You’ll wake the house,” Elfriede says.

He straightens and takes a deep drag from his cigarette. “I’m sorry.”

“Of course I understand there’s a war on. My God. How many damned socks have I darned, how many bandages, how many hours do I spend with all your widows, Wilfred? How many hours in the hospital dressing wounds?”

“I know. I know.”

“My son. My son is fighting in some regiment in Poland, and I don’t know where, and he might be dead this minute. Johann might be dead, and God knows when I’m going to discover that fact. In some letter from the Red Cross, I suppose, or from Helga, even worse. My own husband is the sworn enemy of my own son. If you meet him in battle, Wilfred, what will you do? Will you kill him?”

“Not if he kills me first, obviously.”

Elfriede swings her legs out of bed, hoists herself up, and snatches her dressing gown from the floor nearby.

“Elfriede?”

She shoves her arms in the holes and belts the robe over her swollen breasts, her swollen belly. The door’s shut tight; she swings it open and lumbers down the hallway and down the stairs, outside, outside, even though the air’s cooling fast and turning damp, because she can’t stand another minute of her husband. Not this husband, anyway. The word’s taken on a strange new meaning over the past two years.