The Angel Makers (14 page)

She understands. ‘Lujza,’ she mouths.

‘Lujza,’ he says firmly. He looks completely unafraid. Her eyes open, and he extends a hand, his movements slow and smooth. ‘Give them to me.’ He speaks in Italian, but his meaning is clear. She falls suddenly silent, her eyes on his outstretched palm. ‘Give them to me, Lujza,’ he says again, his voice gentler this time.

There is an agonising pause, during with no one seems to breathe, all eyes fixed on the tableau in the centre of the yard. Then, tortuously slowly, Lujza raises her shaking right arm, and drops the scissors in Marco’s hand. He swiftly throws them to one side where they land, harmless, in a patch of dry grass, and just in time, because Lujza gives a broken, painful sob that chills the entrails of everyone who hears it. Her knees buckle, and it’s only Marco slipping his left arm under her shoulders, his right hand holding her bodice closed, that stops her from falling. All heads turn again in response to a shouting and a pounding of feet which halt by the gate, and
thank God
, Lujza’s mother and brother-in-law arrive, both weeping, and gather her up.

When she is out of his hands, Marco approaches Sari, his face grave. Around her, people are starting to move again, and a buzz of noise is starting up. ‘Her husband?’ he asks.

‘Yes,’ she whispers, not trusting her voice to remain steady with any more volume. He nods, his expression sad and thoughtful, before looking at her, suddenly businesslike.

‘Come on,’ he says, and leads her over to where Werner is still lying by the gate, seemingly forgotten by everyone else. Sari kneels down beside him, swiftly unbuttoning his shirt, and finds to her enormous relief that the wound is just a shallow, glancing cut, tracing the edge of his abdomen, and that Werner’s silence and stillness is just down to shock, rather than anything more sinister.

‘He’s fine,’ she says to Marco.

‘Good,’ he replies, before turning to Werner. ‘Listen to me,’ Marco says, this time in German, and Werner’s head turns. ‘She pushed you. You fell. You cut yourself on a stone. Do you understand?’

Werner looks blank, and Marco shakes him slightly. ‘Do you understand? You fell. You cut yourself. Do you understand?’

Werner nods his head: yes.

‘Good,’ Marco says again, and turns back to Sari. ‘Patch him up.’

Sari binds Werner’s wound with agrimony to stop the bleeding, and with the help of some of Judit’s brandy, he’s soon back to a quiet and chastened approximation of normal. As a gesture of goodwill, to thank him for keeping quiet about how he really got his injury, Sari and Anna offer to wash and mend his shirt that is torn and bloodstained after Lujza’s attack.

Although it’s only really a one-person job, both of them go down to the river to do it. Sari doesn’t feel much like being alone, and Anna doesn’t seem to either; she’s uncharacteristically quiet, but Sari can imagine what she’s thinking – that if she could swap Péter’s death for Károly’s, she would do it in a heartbeat.

‘I knew she was a bit odd, you know,’ Anna says tentatively, plunging Werner’s shirt into the water, ‘but I never would have thought she’d be violent like that.’

‘She didn’t mean to hurt anyone,’ Sari says.

‘Why do you say that? She
stabbed
Werner!’

‘Yes, but – think about it. If she’d gone down to the camp meaning to hurt someone, she could have taken something far more effective than a pair of scissors. She’s got a whole kitchen full of knives. The scissors – I think they were probably just in her pocket, and she pulled them out when she thought she needed them.’

‘Maybe.’ Anna is unconvinced, and Sari changes the subject.

‘Did you know Péter well?’ she asks.

Anna gives a one-armed shrug.

‘Not really. He wasn’t originally from the village – I think his family moved back here when his father died, because his mother was from here. She’s my mother’s cousin, or something like that. He always seemed nice, though.’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’ She doesn’t really remember Péter much; he was always somewhat overshadowed by the force of Lujza’s personality.

‘Do you think Lujza will be all right?’ Anna asks. She’s still slightly pale from the shocks of the morning.

‘Physically, I think so. Otherwise – she’s always been – she’s a bit – you know.’ Sari can’t quite think of the words

she needs without sounding uncharitable, but Anna has no such qualms.

‘A bit of a loon,’ she supplies, and Sari gives a half-hearted laugh.

‘Yes. I don’t know how this will affect her in that way.’

They slip into silence again, and for a few minutes there’s nothing but the repetitive slop of cloth on water.

‘Marco did well today,’ Anna says with feigned casualness, watching Sari out of the corner of her eye.

‘I suppose,’ Sari says. She hardly wants to admit, even to herself, quite how impressed she was at the ease with which Marco took control of the situation.

‘Why do you think she listened to him?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe it was just that he was the only one to approach her. Maybe she would have been the same with anyone. Or maybe—’ and suddenly she finds that she wants to talk about him – ‘have you noticed he has this – this kind of stillness? Not quite calm – he’s too intense to be calm – but there’s something that, I suppose, draws attention? And also,’ she adds, not quite knowing what she’s going to say until it’s out of her mouth, ‘he was the one person there who wasn’t afraid of her. He’s never afraid.’

She stops. Anna is staring at her, unabashed, and Sari feels her cheeks flushing; she’s terribly conscious that she’s probably never said so many words about Marco to anyone since she met him.

‘Well!’ says Anna, with the irritating air of someone who has just made a fascinating discovery. ‘Well, well, well. How interesting.’

‘Oh, shut up, Anna.’

Anna clearly has no intention of doing any such thing. She pulls shirt out of the water – now showing only a faint hint of a stain where Werner’s waistline would be – and sits back on her heels, surveying Sari in a maternal way that is profoundly annoying. ‘You know, you just about had me convinced, before. All those innocent excuses:
oh, no, of course we’re not interested in each other like that; I just want to learn from him!
Yes, I really was starting to believe you.’

‘Anna. Shut up.’

‘You’ve been very discreet, I must say. So, how long have you been …?’ Anna wiggles her eyebrows suggestively.
Oh God.

‘We’re not! Nothing’s happened, all right?’

Anna looks downcast for a moment, but then brightens.

‘All right, maybe nothing’s happened yet … but you admit that you want it to?’

‘
God
, Anna! No!’

‘Liar!’

They pause, staring at one another. Sari is grinning now, a brittle sort of hilarity running through her, a powerful surge of exhilaration that although something bad has happened, it hasn’t happened to
her
.

‘Just because
you’re
a fallen woman doesn’t mean that everyone else is going to go the same way!’

Anna gasps at that, mock-shocked. ‘I don’t know
what
you mean, Sari. I am a dutiful married woman.’

‘Really?’

‘Of course.’

‘Hmmm,’ is all that Sari says, her tone disbelieving. She waits until Anna’s guard is down, and then pounces.

‘Sari! What do you think you’re—?’

Sari yanks down Anna’s bodice as far as the top of her the

breasts, and there they are, a series of five elegant little love bites, just below the line of her clothing. Anna blushes a deep red, but doesn’t look displeased.

‘Not so much of a dutiful married woman
now
, are you?’

Sari asks, smirking.

‘Mosquito bites,’ Anna says, straight-faced.

‘Oh,
now
who’s the liar?’

There’s a tussle then, the sort of silly, fun fight that neither of them have had since they were children, with pushing, and playful, open handed slaps, and a bit of gentle hair-tugging – all of which is fine until Sari pulls the ribbon out of Anna’s hair and drops it in the mud, to which Anna retaliates by grabbing Werner’s shirt off the bush where it has been drying, and flinging it into the river.

‘That’s Werner’s shirt! You can’t just throw it in the river!’

Sari kicks off her shoes. Two minutes later, Anna is wheezing with laughter, as Sari, dressed only in her chemise and petticoat, steps gingerly into the water. It’s warmer than she expected; the current is not strong, there, and the sun’s been heating the water all day. The bottom is uneven though, and Sari curses to herself when she stubs her toe on a smooth, hidden stone and lurches sideways, only to be engulfed suddenly in water up to her waist.

The shirt has caught on a rock, about two arms’ lengths away from where she is, and she boldly wades out further, the water tickling the bottom of her ribcage, then lapping up over her breasts. Arms rearing up out of the water to grab the shirt, she’s nearly there when Anna cries out ‘Sari!’ in a voice that’s both shocked and amused.

‘What?’ Sari says, irritated, turning in Anna’s direction, but Anna’s looking past Sari, up the bank on the other side of the river. She’s looking at Marco.

Well, of course
, Sari thinks crazily, before shooting a horrified glance down at her front, to find that, yes, it’s as she suspected, the cream cloth covering her breasts has become almost entirely transparent. She bends her knees sharply, plunging below the water so that only her head is visible, and calls out, in a shrill, shaky voice that sounds utterly unlike hers, ‘What are you doing here?’

Marco is not even bothering to suppress his grin at Sari’s scandalised expression. ‘I was looking for you,’ he says, and behind Sari, Anna, who evidently understands a bit more German than she lets on, says, dryly, ‘Well, you found her.’

Sari starts to splash for shore. ‘Don’t look!’ she shouts at Marco, voice slightly wild. Obedient, he turns his back, and she stumbles through the shallows, holding out her hands as Anna, who is still giggling to herself, passes her clothes. ‘He’s not looking, is he?’ Sari hisses. Anna shakes her head, as Sari drags on her skirt and bodice over her wet underclothes.

‘All right,’ she calls to Marco, ‘you can turn around now!’

For a moment, no one says anything; the two girls simply gaze at Marco from the opposite side of the river. Then Anna seems to come to her senses. ‘Right, then!’ she says, businesslike. ‘I’ve got to go and do some … things. So, I’ll see you later, Sari!’ and she scrambles up the bank, back towards the village, still emitting occasional spurts of laughter.

‘Meet you at the bridge?’ Sari calls to Marco.

Werner’s shirt, forgotten, drifts elegantly downstream.

They walk across the plain, not talking about anything very much, and yet Sari is uncomfortable. Despite the heat of the sun, wearing sodden undergarments with heavy clothing on top is not a pleasant experience. But she’s also uncomfortable because she knows what she must look like, mud-smeared and bedraggled, and that makes her even more uncomfortable, because she’s never bothered about how she looks in front of Marco before.

Marco keeps up a stream of respectful questions about Lujza, how she is, who’s looking after her, and whether she will be all right, but eventually even he seems exhausted by meaningless small talk. They have nearly reached the edge of the woods, the village squatting, dark and low, on the horizon.

‘Why did you approach her?’ Sari asks the question that’s been on her mind all day. Much to her annoyance, her heart is hammering, and it feels like her stomach is frosting over.
So
this
is what Anna’s been going on about
, she thinks.

‘She wasn’t going to hurt anyone. If she’d meant to do any damage, she wouldn’t have drawn so much attention to herself, and she would have armed herself with something more effective than a pair of scissors. She was just – sad.’

Sari nods. He’s not helping matters, echoing her own thoughts like that. She can’t think of anything else to say, looking fixedly at the ground, until he raises a hand and plucks a damp, slimy twig from her hair, and then she doesn’t know where to look, and so she looks at him.

Marco swallows. ‘Sari,’ he says, his voice dry and scratchy. She stays silent. ‘You’re too young,’ Marco says.

‘I’ll be seventeen this year.’ (
What is she saying?)

‘I don’t want to – to mess things up for you.’

‘I know what I’m doing.’ (
No, she doesn’t!)

This is it
, Sari thinks. She can’t shift her eyes from his face, feeling a slightly painful mix of elation and reluctance. He puts a hand under her chin, and raises it.

‘I’m only human,’ he says, as if to himself, sounding almost angry about the fact. She doesn’t answer, because by then he is kissing her.

CHAPTER TEN

‘Of course, this means nothing,’ Marco says. ‘You know it means nothing.’

Sari rolls her eyes and expels a hissing sigh. It is the third time that he has said those words in the past two hours, and the repetition is becoming tedious. ‘I know,’ she says, pauses a little, and then adds, slyly, ‘And I know why you keep going on about it, too.’