Silver Dagger

The house had three stories.

THE FIRST

Before the war he was not a father, but when he returned he was twice over – a child in Alabama, a daughter that his wife had named Savanna after her mother, and in Germany a son that he would never meet, the boy called Adam after the man himself, and his father, and his father’s father.

Before the war he was not a drinker, nor a smoker, nor fluent in tasteless language, but once returned he was all of this and more. Lindsay, his wife and high school sweetheart, felt that his new interests were of the devil, and she said as much.

“You have sin behind your eyes,” she would say to him. “And in your hands. And on your breath.”

Sometimes he would walk away, but often times he would strike her, not once or twice but again and again, standing over her, saying her name, telling her to stand up and be struck down.

Before the war his touch had been as sweet and natural as the wind moving through the trees.

THE SECOND

He had come too late, but he had come.

The boy spoke near-perfect English, though dramatically, his accent and affectations picked up from old films he had studied during his time in Paris.

He said he was the son of Adam, and in his hand he held the watch. They welcomed him into the home.

“You just missed him,” the old woman told him, pointing to an urn on the fireplace.

Savanna took a slow drag of a cigarette and shook her head.

“You didn’t miss a thing.”

In the mornings the young man, taller than his father and with blonde hair instead of brown but otherwise identical, would go to the market and pick up a pint of milk, a half carton of eggs, rye bread, and by the time the women awoke he would have breakfast ready, reading the paper, looking for work.

“I have never felt German,” he told them. “If it’s the same to you, I’d rather stay.”

He spoke of his mother only once, and it was to say, “She was not much of a mother.”

He only asked after his father once, and after hearing a few tales, with a small, defeated nod he said, “Seems like the type of man my mother would get mixed up with.”

Bruno was his middle name, and so the women called him that.

THE THIRD

The old woman had warned them both against it, had claimed it to be ungodly, but inevitably they fell in love.

It started in the kitchen, Bruno teaching her to cook, then continued in the family room where Savanna taught him scales on the piano, which led finally to the bedroom where they learned how to be simple.

He was, in body, her father, but her own age, and with compassion.

She was to him his equal, someone to force him to be better.

In the dark they were both endless and non-existent, the mirror image of an empty room.

When she got pregnant they had to make a decision.

“We will leave,” he said. “Tonight. We will have to steal the car, but we can sell it, buy another.”

“We can’t just leave,” she said, her eyes on the floor, her hands moving without her knowledge, pulling at her dress.

“Believe me,” he said and kissed her. “I have left before.”

He went, as he often did after dinner, for a walk, but instead of to the creek he went to town, bought cheese and apples and a canteen for water, blankets and a book of short stories for Savanna to read to him as he drove. He had planned to stash the goods in a bush just at the edge of the property, then load them up once the car was pushed down to the road, but he dropped everything when the house came into view, when he saw every light on in the structure, every window of all three floors filled with the yellow glow cast from low watt bulbs. He ran to the house faster than he had thought himself capable, but he knew that whatever was waiting for him was something permanant, was a deed that could not be undone.

The old woman said, “You have the sin inside you, just like your father did.” She held a silver dagger in her hand, clean as can be, with everything else a gruesome mess, the room stained with what used to be Savanna. “And you put it in my daughter, had to ruin the one good thing he gave me.”

From the street the house had three stories, and inside it was the same.