I pressed the keys once more, harder this time, and let my fingers follow the flow and pattern they knew by heart. I was aware of Ute turning toward me, of a sharp intake of breath which she held while I played, but I closed my eyes and went with the music. And when Ute propped open the piano lid, the room was filled with a magical sound and I knew the music came from somewhere real and true.
My mother stood at the kitchen sink, peeling potatoes. I put on my duffle coat and lifted the torch from a hook behind the cellar door.
“I won’t be long,” I said to her, and stepped outside the back door before she could stop me. Even though it was night, the frost was gone and the air warmer. I let my eyes get used to the dark, following the same route down to the bottom of the garden that Oskar and I had taken earlier that day, to the chain-link fence. I lifted it up and slipped underneath. The smell of ivy and undergrowth in the cemetery was stronger than before. I still didn’t put the torch on, but let my memory guide me through the trees until I came out beside Rosa Carlos. I switched the light on and shone it up into the angel’s face, illuminating the underside of her chin, the concern in her brows, and the narrow slit of her eyes as she looked sorrowfully down at me. I bent and scrabbled in the same dirt I had dug in only hours earlier, and with the help of the torch I found James’s face, undamaged despite his time in the ground. I put him in my pocket and switched off the light, letting the night settle around me, and went home.
“Let’s have some hot water, Mrs. Viney,” I said to my mother as I went past her in the kitchen.
She gave a half-hearted laugh and carried on preparing dinner. I went into the sitting room, and from the bureau drawer I got the photograph with the hole where James’s face should have been. On my way upstairs to Oskar’s room I turned the thermostat down and heard the heating click off.
“Have you got any tape?” I asked him.
He was lying on his bed, reading a book about knots.
“Desk,” he said, without taking his eyes off the page. “Did you know, the only animals that are able to tie knots are the gorilla and the weaver bird?”
I fished the dot of James’s face from the corner of my coat pocket and placed it on a piece of tape. I set the photograph over the top so that James’s face slotted back into the space he had left earlier that day. I put the picture on Oskar’s desk; he didn’t look up from his book when I went from his room.
In the bathroom, I ran a shallow bath and took off my clothes, letting them drop on the floor. I slid into the tepid water, watching the very top of my belly rise above it like a tiny island. I closed my eyes and remembered the warm summer sun turning the tips of Reuben’s hair orange.