Before they left for the church, in the carriage bedecked with flowers, Elfriede’s mother pressed a lace handkerchief into her hand, as tradition required. Elfriede was to mop up her bridal tears with this linen square, and afterward to fold it and tuck it away in her drawer on her wedding night. There it’s supposed to lie, until one day, when Elfriede dies, the Cloth of Tears will shroud her cold, dead features. Tradition. As it turned out, Elfriede didn’t cry at all during the ceremony that united her to Gerhard, nor in the carriage to Schloss Kleist while Gerhard held her hand snugly beneath her massive wedding dress, nor during the wedding banquet in the schloss’s baroque great hall, two hundred years old, bearing an exquisite resemblance to the wedding cake itself. (Her mother exclaimed over the dryness of the Cloth of Tears, when she extracted it unused from Elfriede’s bodice as she prepared her daughter for bed.) And she did not cry when Gerhard himself entered the nuptial chamber, smelling pungently of soap, dressed in pajamas and a silk dressing gown. Elfriede had drunk several glasses of champagne, and her new husband appeared to her in a haze as he approached the monumental bed on which his bride sat. He knelt—such a big, powerful man, thirty-three years old, kneeling before her!—and covered her hands with kisses. Elfriede stared down at his wheaten head, worshiping her, and felt a sincere, loving warmth move her heart. A sincere connection to Gerhard, who had shared this day with her, who had stood by her side, the two of them united against all those curious guests and well-wishers. “I will be gentle, my dearest girl,” he promised, removing her nightgown with trembling fingers, kissing her mouth and her breasts and everything else, and Elfriede, dazed and tender, lay back on the embroidered bedspread while he climbed on top of her, and still she didn’t cry. He untied the belt of his dressing gown and shrugged it off, but he didn’t remove his pajamas. Perhaps he didn’t want to frighten her. In any case, he reached inside his pajama trousers and drew out his organ, primed for business, and Elfriede, being somewhat drunk for the first time in her life, couldn’t help glancing at this thing that had consumed her curiosity since adolescence, this object designed by nature to plant seeds inside her womb. At the reality of her husband’s erection, however, the tears sprang at last to her eyes. “Oh no!” she said, but it was too late. Gerhard’s face had already clouded over with rapture, he was already fitting this startling, stiff machine—nothing like the harmless anatomy of the classical statues, God have mercy, of the Renaissance paintings—between her legs. As he shoved his way in, saying her name and invoking his love for her while he split her apart, she gripped the pillows and wept, but the Cloth of Tears was already tucked away in her bureau, unreachable and useless.