The Letter
Somewhere in Italy
The news came days after it happened. He carried the letter in his pocket, refused to speak the words until at last the headmaster called him into his office. Afternoon classes were in session, but he’d skipped nearly all of them this week.
“I know words are hollow and meaningless, but I am very, very sorry for your loss. If you would like to return home for the funer--”
His gaze snapped to attention.
“No. I’ll stay.” His voice was gravely from lack of use. The letter burned in his pocket. His fingers--the fingers of a musician, a pianist unfit for anything but performing--curled into fists.
“Attending a funeral won’t bring him back. Let the other soldiers mourn his grave. I...I should be in class. Thank you for your concern.”
Over ancient spectacles that should have been replaced long ago, the old man smiled, just a little.
“Very well, Mr. Alexander. If you ever need to talk...”
A curt nod, a thin-lipped smile. The flaxen haired boy, ever pale with the strain of existing, rose from the chair and went on his way.
St. Katherine’s Orphanage and Boarding School
Manhattan, New York
Rosalie stepped into the dormitory she shared with twelve other girls and spotted the youngest inspecting her violin with rapt curiosity.
“Sophie, how many times have I told you not to touch my things?”
Wide eyed, the girl leapt from Rosalie’s bed like a frightened fawn and scampered to her own bed, hastily snatching up her abandoned grammar book, her naked feet leaping from the darkly paneled wood floor to the coarse blankets she neglected to set straight that morning.
Rosalie picked up the ancient violin and carefully laid it in its rich mahogany, velvet lined case. She rescued the slender bow from where it lay teetering upon the edge of her plain night-stand, tightening the over loosened metallic frog ever so slightly so as to bring the bleached horse-hairs together as one.
She hesitated a moment before closing the case, admiring with affection the delicate carvings which trimmed the edges of her most beloved possession. The elegant, flamed stain of the wood, the creamy-black ebony fittings which fit so neatly, as if they had always been one with the violin. As if the instrument had simply grown from the ground, a natural and beautiful creation of nature, and not the work of a dedicated luthier. The luthier, whose calligraphic brand lay within the belly of the instrument, whose name she knew only as the maker of her violin.
Legato.
“Rose?” Rosalie pulled shut the case after quickly checking to make sure the cerulean ribbons which secured bow and instrument were fastened, and spun around in answer to her caller. Her brother stood at the doorway, a twinkle in his blue and golden streaked eyes, which ever gave the appearance of dancing flames against a sea of royal blue silk.
“Day dreaming again, schwester?”
Rosalie began to protest, but realized Friedrich was teasing—not reprimanding like the nuns at St. Katherine’s Orphanage, where they’d lived since being rescued from the ashes of their ruined home.
“Yes, brother.” Rosalie greeted him with a smile in English. It was too painful to speak her parents’ mother tongue, too poignant a memory of happier days. Friedrich had forced himself to forget that past. German was a language and nothing more.
“The sisters will be calling us for Vespers soon.” Her brother leaned against the doorframe. Boys were not allowed in the girl’s dormitories, even if they were family. The Sisters of St. Katherine’s kept a strict code of honor. Friedrich only obliged the rule because he had no desire to be struck with a switch; he had suffered the punishment often enough in the past, but now abided by the rules after Abbess Mary Catherine Martins threatened to have Sister Hildegard punish him instead.
Sister Hildegard would not be as sympathetic as Abbess Martins. The large woman was coarse and harsh; Rosalie often wondered whether or not her parents had forced her into the clergy, for surely no-one of her demeanor would choose to devote themselves to religion of their own free will.
As Rosalie let her eyes slip down her brother’s frame, she noticed a bright red mark on the side of his arm. She gave him a weary look, not bothering to hide her disdain. Friedrich flushed crimson, his freckled skin closely matching his shock of carnelian locks.
“You said you weren’t going to play with fire any more.” Rosalie said pointedly.
Friedrich shrugged.
“I lied,” he said.
“It’s dangerous.” Rosalie stepped forward to examine his wound.
“I know.”
“If the sisters caught you...”
“I know. I can’t help it. Sister Winifred left a packet of matches on the table in the boys’ dormitory after she lit our reading candles.”
Sister Winifred was a wispy creature with frizzy mouse-brown hair. A sweet lady, who gave the children extra servings when she had kitchen duty and listened kindly to all of their problems, but absentminded.
’“Well...that may be so, but you shouldn’t use Sister Winnie as an excuse. You didn’t have to use the matches. But you did.”
Rosalie spoke the much familiar words as she rubbed a cooling salve from her night-stand on her brother’s burn. She kept the container beside her bed all the time, knowing that Friedrich would never apply it on his own. He didn’t mind the burns, he said. He just liked fire.
“You’re going to burn the school down, someday Fry.”
Friedrich shook his head in protest. “No. I’m careful. I wouldn’t let that happen.”
Rosalie eyed him wearily as she replaced the salve on the sturdy bed-side table. “Careful? Is that how you burned yourself, by being careful?”
Friedrich smiled. “You worry too much. Ah, listen! The bells are ringing. Let’s go.”
Rosalie forgot her frustration with Friedrich as they walked together to the chapel at the East Wing of the Abbey.
The girls’ dormitories were in the West Wing, allowing the two several minutes to ease the tension between them. By the time they were passing through the large, ornately carved oak doors, they were both laughing together once more. They had learned over the years to not stay angry; life was simply too short to live in hatred.
The two siblings took a seat on the third pew, the place assigned the both of them as third years at St. Katherine’s. In truth, Friedrich belonged with the other 14-year-old second years, but the sisters had moved him up to Rosalie’s group when he showed educational promise when they first arrived at the Abbey.
These days, Friedrich was steadily slipping behind the other third years, the result of his ever-growing boredom and frustration with the boarding school and the overbearing rule held by Abbess Martins. He was a smart boy, Rosalie knew. Smart, and rebellious.
Friedrich had never been gifted in the art of sitting still. Even now, at 14, Rosalie had to silence his whispered comments and stay his restless movements with a reminding touch of her pale hand. Even then, several moments later her brother was fidgeting again, shifting in his seat, toying anxiously with his wooden beaded rosary, and sighing with frustration as Abbess Martins read from her Psalter, and conducted the children in their recitations of their prayers.
Typically, the littlest children had the most difficulty in sitting still, and remembering their prayers. But often times Friedrich was almost as restless. Rosalie marveled at her brother, wondering if he might not someday explode from all of his pent-up energy. When she thought of this, it made it easier for her to forgive his fixation with fire. Watching the flames calmed him, allowed him to focus on something beautiful...something magical. She could understand that.
And yet, it ran deeper than that. Rosalie wondered if Friedrich’s fascination with fire spawned from his disbelief of what it could do; his defiance that fire had been his parents’ murderer. But there was no telling with Friedrich...it seemed sometimes that he had no memory at all of the fire which claimed their home and family, or even of the happy times before.
As the Abbess continued to recite prayers, Rosalie disengaged her mind from the familiar words which came so naturally to her. As a Protestant, she had always been hesitant about giving any true thought to Catholic traditions, though because of the great debt she owed the sisters, she at least respected them by reciting the traditional prayers.
She shifted her gaze from the bony, sharp featured Abbess, to the image of the Virgin Mary on the wall behind her. Despite what it represented to the Catholic faith, Rosalie had always thought the image very beautiful and quite out of place in the stark and rigid boarding school.
The Virgin’s eyes stared out in a serene gaze, a trace of unfathomable mystery in the sea grey depths. Her soft features were accentuated by the dark blue robes which covered her hair and the rest of her slender body.
Escaping the voluminous folds of her robe, one delicate hand stretched out in beckoning to the sanctuary, the other poised gracefully over her heart, where there glowed a golden cross. This painting had been part of the reason that Rosalie had tried so hard to be what the sisters considered to be a good young girl, even if she was not devout to their religion.
Something about the Virgin’s depiction made it impossible for Rosalie to harbor ill will towards the strict nuns. She was just too accepting, too kind and ethereal. And something about her reminded Rosalie of her own mother.
Her mother the dancer. Elsie Dauss. The pride of the New York Ballet Company, but always and forever she would remain to Rosalie the gentle woman who had smiled and laughed with her, had nursed her when she was sick, and taught her to see the beauty in life. Sometimes Rosalie still couldn’t fathom that she was gone, brought down by a simple swipe of nature’s back hand.
After evening prayers, Abbess Martins called those up to the front who had received letters or packages that day. Friedrich and Rosalie had never received anything. They knew no-one outside of the Abbey.
Today was different.
“Friedrich and Rosalie Dauss. Come, come, don’t dawdle.” Her sharp voice echoed throughout the chapel.
For a moment Rosalie did not move, disbelieving her ears. Friedrich stopped fidgeting with his rosary.
“We...we have a letter.” Rosalie eyed Friedrich with a look of wonder.
“Miss Dauss? Would you care to collect your letter? Or shall I reserve it for the fireplace?”
“Forgive me, Mother,” Rosalie replied, at last standing and walking to the elderly woman’s altar.
“From Italy, it says.”
Rosalie took the cream-colored envelope from the weathered hand. It was sealed with wax stamped by a music note.
“Italy!” Rosalie returned to the pew and sat down beside her brother. Quick as a flash, Friedrich grabbed the letter and began to open it.
