Free The Dark Room by Rachel Seiffert

her steps. She empties the handkerchief into the bramble bushes at the boundary with the neighboring farm. One or two of the blackened badges spring back against the branches and Lore kicks them into the undergrowth, throwing loose earth and grass after them. She washes her hands in the stream and dips Peter’s toes in the shallows to make him laugh. The sun warms their hair and the hills cradle their voices.
    Lore thinks about Mutti waiting, watching for them. She cuts across the wide, quiet fields back to the farmhouse, with Peter asleep on her arm. Whispers to him.
    —Before the victory there will be pain.
    She steels herself for the blood and flames.
    Lore is scrubbing potatoes at the window when the Americans arrive.
    The twins have strayed from the yard again, Liesel has followed them, and Mutti has gone out to shout for them at the gate. Lore knows her mother has seen the jeep, but she knocks on the window anyway, leaving a muddy potato streak on the glass. Mutti doesn’t turn round. She was calling for the children, but now she is quiet, watching the jeep make its slow approach across the pasture to the yard.
    When the Americans stop to open the top gate, Mutti turns and walks inside. She tells Lore,
    —Keep working.
    Wipes her hands and runs them through her hair, gets her lipstick from her pocket, and puts on her hat and coat.
    Lore watches her mother; but if Mutti is frightened, she doesn’t show it. She goes outside and Lore carries on working. Fishing muddy potatoes out of brown water, dropping clean potatoes into clear water. Her hands are pink and the blood sings in her ears. She concentrates on the wet earth smell and her cold fingers. Pulse hammering at her throat.
    Her mother meets the soldiers as they pull up in the yard. They leave the jeep running while they talk. Mutti stands straight with her hands by her sides. One soldier has a clipboard with papers, and he flips through these while Mutti speaks. Another leans against the jeep while he asks her questions. The soldier with the clipboard writes something down and then hands a piece of paper to Mutti, which she pulls close to her face to read. Lore stops scrubbing. The group outside is silent, but the jeep is still running. Mutti turns the paper over to read the other side and the American with the clipboard kicks at the ground with his toe. Mutti is speaking now. Shepasses her hand across her forehead and gestures to the house. The American leaning against the jeep stands up straight and looks over to Lore at the window. The American holding the clipboard holds up four fingers, and Mutti shakes her head and holds up five. This is noted on the clipboard, too. The papers are signed by both Americans and by Mutti, then a copy is torn off and folded and sealed in an envelope, which Mutti holds in front of her with both hands as the Americans drive out of the yard without closing the gate behind them.
    The children come back late, but Mutti doesn’t scold them. They pull the table out from the wall and eat together as usual. Boisterous with guilt and relief, Liesel giggles and the twins kick at each other under the table. Mutti says nothing about the Americans and Lore knows it is their secret.
    She lies in the little bed with Liesel, eyes closed, listening as Mutti slides into the big bed with Peter and the twins and puts out the lamp. Americans are better than Russians. Russians steal and burn and hurt women, shame them. The Americans come with clipboards and don’t even look in the house.
    Lore opens her eyes, thinks; the fighting could come now, in the night, like the bombs always did.
    She remembers the badges in the bushes. She should have thrown them in the deep water; buried them under the stones on the riverbed.
    Lore lies still and listens, but there are no guns, just her mother’s breathing. Only when she hears it deepen and lengthen does Lore allow herself to fall asleep too.
    Mutti says she is sick and sleeps with her face to the wall.