Chapter 14

If she could have found a place to sleep in the sitting room, Brigitta knew that she would rather have just curled up there, pushing aside the final tears that slipped from her eyes now. Instead, she had stepped into the room that she shared with her sisters and brother for just a moment before Gretl began to pester her about what Max had written.

"Brigitta, what was in that letter?" She had not even closed the door all the way before her youngest sister asked her that. She did not answer, instead closing the door slowly, deliberately. Through the shrinking gap, she just had a glimpse of her father retiring to his own room, the lights snuffed out; Sabina had perhaps tried to sleep already, Brigitta decided. "Brigitta?" Gretl called again, and she shoved the door forward the rest of the way, nearly slamming it.

"What?" she asked, not turning around. If she did, then there would be more questions. Why she chewed so heavily on her lip, why her face was wet, or quite simply where her letter was.

"Will you tell us what Uncle Max had to say?" Gretl asked, eager as fourteen year-olds typically were. Did she not feel a thing any longer, not a sadness at her uncle's death, Brigitta wondered? Sometimes, when she regarded her younger sisters, especially Gretl, she thought they had no sense at all. Christopher and Eric were too young to judge so harshly, but Gretl and even Marta at times seemed to not have a thought in their heads!

Finally spinning about to face the interior of the room, Brigitta just breathed for a moment. Her older brother was just sitting on the edge of his bed—a rollaway cot, really—flipping through a pad of notes, the pages filled with his own cramped and disheveled writing. Whatever he had studied in college over the past year, Brigitta knew that was what he looked over. Sitting with her ankles crossed on the bed that she shared with Brigitta and Gretl, Marta was leafing carelessly through a book worn by age and twirling a lock of hair on her finger. For a moment Brigitta could not put a name to the cover, but she recognized it: Gone With the Wind. Whatever Marta thought of it, she did not care for it. It was too empty a book for her at any time, and now—

"Brigitta!" Gretl said her name again, almost shouting it this time.

"Don't shout," Kurt said absently. The way he squinted his eyes, holding his notes so near his face with his pencil beside his nose, it would only be a few years before he had some need of glasses.

"Well, are you going to tell us?"

"There's nothing to tell," Brigitta said in a thick voice. Gretl was not as blind with her eyes as she seemed to be with her mind at times, and Brigitta looked down at the letter still clenched in her hand.

"There must be. You're upset—"

"I am not upset!" Brigitta snapped. She didn't even know why she felt she had to lie, but by God, she could not endure the pestering that her youngest sister would put her under if she allowed that something was amiss.

"But your eyes are red." Marta had looked up from her book, keeping her place with a finger that she closed either half of the novel around.

"Were you crying?"

"No—"

"And your hair is all wrong." Gretl lifted a hand to her sister's long tresses, pushing them over the older girl's shoulder. "What happened?"

"Nothing happened," Brigitta said again, stepping back from Gretl's touch. In another second or two, she would have slapped the girl's fingers away angrily. "I—I just got some dust in my eyes." The lie was pathetic even in her ears, and Kurt looked up from his notes, his bright eyes incredulous.

"That's as bad as something Friedrich might say," he said, pressing the tip of his pencil to the page again, looking back down.

Gretl laughed quietly, clapping her hands together, as though she remembered something. "Your lies used to be plausible," she said. "Friedrich's were always terrible—"

"Gretl, be quiet!" she snapped finally, and Gretl's face paled a bit at the sudden anger. Memories were bubbling up in Brigitta's mind, small incidents and moments that she had tucked away, almost buried, and all went back to Maria. Her eyes were tearing again, and she brushed them away with her free hand.

"What's wrong?" Gretl asked. "Please, just tell us—"

"No!" How could she? Gretl would simply mope, perhaps whine a bit like the child she still was, and Marta would cry to herself. What would Kurt do? Looking to her brother, Brigitta crossed her arms on her chest, crumpling the letter even further. She wasn't certain he would even hear her through his dedication to the book of notes before him. None of them could understand, not a one!

And so, she was just lying on the part of the bed that belonged to her, staring out the window that looked out to the evening sky over the city. For a few minutes she had escaped for a bath that had been little more than enough time to scrub the grime of the city away from her skin—keeping her letter with her while she did—but as she lay curled up, it had not been enough; no distraction could wash away her memories. So much of what she remembered from Salzburg was gone: her governess, her friends, no doubt even her home. Snaking a hand from around the sheet—anything else was too heavy in the heat of the summer night—Brigitta scrubbed at her eye.

Around her, her siblings were still awake, Marta reading beside her, Gretl sketching something in a journal, and Kurt still paging through his notes. Though still early, Brigitta had already changed to her nightgown; all she wished to do was sleep, to forget anything that had happened this evening. Her letter was still in her fist, the sweat of her palm soaking the pages, and as she closed her eyes, just wanting to have the emptiness of sleep, Brigitta wasn't sure why she held it so tightly. Her sweat would not wash away the words written there.

Shoot her. It had already gone through her mind more than a hundred times, but every time she heard it again, Brigitta winced. What was it Uncle Max had said, that she did not need to know anymore? Shoot her! Why couldn't she open her eyes? The longer they were closed, the more she feared to see what it was he had refused to say.

Shoot her, she's only a nun!

Trembling again, she tightened her hold on the sheet. Not knowing was burden enough.

Despite clenching her eyelids for the entire night, Brigitta did not think she managed a moment's sleep. Each time that she believed she recognized sleep just at the edge of her consciousness, the dreams that were as vivid as her days' fantasies ever were came along, just before that blank mask of sleep. From the first reading of Max's letter, her imagination had formed almost every possible outcome, each one more terrible than the one before. If her eyes were closed for too long, Herr Zeller's voice was echoing in the room in spite of the fact that he was nowhere nearby, barking orders that nearly forced her eyes open.

Shoot her! There were the words that she had drawn from his mouth, and this time, the images that filled her mind with his tones were too much to endure. Her eyes opened to the darkness, nearly overwhelming, but simply black and empty. The pages were crumbled in her fist, wet from her palm. Why did she even keep them now? Brigitta was certain that she already knew the words by heart, that she had felt every word etched into her memory with the first reading.

She turned over again, just as she had done throughout the night. Beside her, Marta and Gretl were asleep, their light breathing the only sound in the room; fortunately, beneath the window on his cot, Kurt did not snore. What time is it? Brigitta thought, rubbing a hand over her eyes. She was exhausted, but still she did not think she would be able to sleep. The first signs of the dawn were breaking over the far horizon, shooting tiny rays of gold and red through the graying sky, and with a sigh, Brigitta sat up. If the morning was so near to arrival, what was the use in remaining abed?

Swinging her legs over the edge of the mattress, Brigitta stood slowly. Though she typically tied her hair back in a long braid, she had not done so the night before. All she had been able to do was to change to her nightgown, and now, the long strands of her hair were tangled into small knots that sat on her shoulders. Tugging her fingers through the bottom most of the knots, she winced a bit at the sting on her skull. On the table beside the large bed lay a comb that one of her sisters must have used before retiring last night, and she picked it up, switching it for the wet pages.

Brigitta drew the teeth of the comb through her hair again and again, hearing the strands break against the firm metal, but not noticing the pain. Just as she had been the night before, she was so cold, as though there was nothing left within her. Shivering, she looked out the window, to the sun that was just beginning to truly rise over the eastern sky, the rays shooting over and around the rows of façades and chimneys. She felt so trapped in this place, as though she would never escape from the eyes of her father, brother and sisters, and Sabina.

That was all she needed at the moment, just to be away from it all. She could not escape it all at this moment, though, for being in Salzburg was enough of a reminder of everything. Tossing the comb back to the table, Brigitta took her hair in one hand, the longest strands easily slipping through her fingers. There was no mirror in this room, and she was glad of that; would she look as weary and heavy as she felt? She as certain she did.

Twisting the length of her hair around one of those fingers, she just looked on as they slipped away, falling against her arm and around to her back another time. It was all fading, sliding out of her grip as well as those strands, as though she had never known any of what she remembered. Rubbing a hand against one of her eyes, still puffy, Brigitta sighed. Where had everything gone, everything she remembered and thought she had known? One day it had been hers and known, easily felt, and now...

If she searched everything she knew, would she discover it another time? No, she didn't know the answer. Brigitta just rubbed at her eye another time. Not knowing could not have been any worse than this. If she did not know the barest of the facts that Max had given to her, then her mind would not be creating these possibilities—

Shoot her, damn you, Knuth! She shook against that thought that filled her mind as loudly as any person's voice, a voice that she could not silence.

The weight of her sleepless night was filling her bones, but Brigitta did not dare sit on the edge of the bed again, or even think of lying back down. She would hear it all again, and she would rather have her exhaustion that relive the memories that she knew were only a shadow of what must have passed.

God damn you, I told you to shoot her! Brigitta clapped her hands to her ears, and a far part of her mind almost seemed to laugh. How foolish she must have appeared, a nearly grown woman pressing her hands to her ears against a sound that wasn't real! And it didn't even matter, did it? Her hands could not keep out what was born in her mind. She just sniffed, not wanting to cry another time. If she just told herself that it was the past—

Brigitta already knew that would do no good. Eight years before, she had already regretted the past, wondered if it were possible to change what was newly in the past. What was done was done, but did it have to remain as it was? Sniffing again, she shook her head. This...There was no changing this.

Death was final.