The Crooked Maid by Dan Vyleta

the fallen soldiers, she had placed an open tin of English beans and some gammon on a painted china plate.
    “Took you a while,” she said, looking up. “Long talk with your father, I suppose.”
    The book she was reading was his school edition of Schiller’s The Robbers . His satchel lay upended on his bed. On the bedside table lay his diary, on top of the scrap of paper on which he had scribbled down Frau Beer’s address. Both looked as though they had been moved.
    Robert repeated the phrase he had used with his mother. “Herr Seidel isn’t well.”
    The girl made a sound, more cackle than laugh. “Was he—?” She rolled back her eyes and let her jaw go slack, mimed the gaping blankness of Herr Seidel’s coma with surprising accuracy. He felt he should tell her off, but sat down on his desk instead, tucked into the tin of beans with the spoon she had provided. The beans were quite cold.
    “You should have warned me,” he complained between spoonfuls.
    “I thought you better see for yourself.” She stretched, dangled her legs. “He fell three yards, maybe three and a half, and managed to land on his head. Clumsy, eh?” Her eyes found his, a smile playing on her lips. “You have a good thing coming. If he dies, I mean.”
    “You shouldn’t do that,” he told her. “Speak ill of the sick.” Robert sampled the gammon, found it salty and tough. All the same, he kept on eating.
    “Did you like him?” she asked abruptly. “When you were a child?”
    He took refuge in his usual platitude. “I hardly knew him.”
    “Oh, go on. You can tell me. Your big secret. That you hate Seidel’s guts.”
    He began to protest, swallowed beans. “You hate him too?” he asked her shyly.
    “Me? Oh, no.” She flushed, not quite in anger. “He’s my benefactor.” She paused, leaned back against the window, drew a knee up to her chin. “Did he send you nice things? When you were at school.”
    He nodded and chewed, baffled by her change of topic. “For Christmas. And on my birthday. A knife once, and a leather folder. Only …”
    “Only?”
    He thought about it, constrained by his habitual sincerity, and struggling to formulate his thought. “It’s just that everything he sent—it was never more than it should have been. Though nice all the same.”
    “Nice,” she repeated. “Yes. Within reason.” She bent forward now, put her hands on her knees, and spoke animatedly, distinctly, one eye inshadow under the brim of the hat. “It’s like this. He rations it, weighs it out. Just the right amount for each occasion. Warmth, I mean. It’s like he learned kindness from a book.”
    “You are very clever. The way you say things.”
    She almost smiled when she realized he meant it in earnest; pointed to his bedding, where his report card peeked out from underneath the satchel. “And you are terrible at maths.”
    “Not terrible,” he grinned. “‘Satisfactory.’ Dr. Schweizer said that all I lack is ‘application.’”
    He laughed then and hoped that she might join him. Perhaps she did, because she hid her face behind a yawn. A sound rose above them, barely muffled by the ceiling, Wagner paced by skips and crackle, and haunted by a thin, light voice. They both kept silent and listened for some moments, wincing when Poldi failed to rise to the high C.
    “The tart loves her opera,” said Eva. “It goes with her new station in life. Did she show you the certificate? For the wedding, I mean. She keeps it handy under the bed. It looks like even the registrar was drunk.”
    “Is that what they fought about? Wolfgang and Seidel?”
    The girl threw down The Robbers and climbed down from the windowsill. The movement was awkward, neck and shoulders stiff upon her trunk. She straightened her blouse before she answered.
    “Why don’t you ask Wolfgang yourself? I am sure they’ll let you see him. You are brothers, after all.”
    “Has Mother gone?”
    “Once.” She smiled. “Came back spitting bile. He