Story: A Friend (part three)

A Friend

(part three)

Anton had not put the kettle on for his cocoa, or his plate in the oven to warm. He stared at Herward, crossed his arms and put his hands in the opposite sleeves. He sat rubbing his handkerchief on a silver card tray, next, absorbed with this as soon as Herward set two or three things in front of him.

“I have chocolate bars,” she told Herward. “You can drink my coffee. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Herward took a cushioned stool that wheezed, expelling air…he chuckled at the noise, and spun to Anton. “My first assignment was down the coast. I grew up in Cadwilliam. You could tell that.”

He called the city by its new name. He touched a finger to Anton’s forearm. “Vonnie and I are good friends. She told me about you.”

“I don’t think Miss Swisshelm likes to be called Vonnie.”

“Oh, well. I call her that because of knowing her. What did she tell you, to call her Yvonne?”

“What is telling? I tell the truth. I give my name as Anton. I was given the name of Anton. She gives me a ring. She gives me over to the enemy. I am given paper to write a confession. But I am given no light…her green stone not meant for seeing…it may be aventurine or tsavorite. I was told I would know when I’d got it right. Herok, unterceddhore.”

“Who knows what all that means.” Mrs. Leonhardt had not heard Anton make such a speech, and flushed at his doing it before a soldier. She poured coffee, offered Herward’s chocolate bar on a saucer. Not unwrapped, because if he shook his head, she would put it away again.

“The herok, ma’am, is a kind of bird, a tattle-bird. It’s a saying of the Hidtha. The Swisshelms had Anton studying the language.”

He looked across, at Anton shaking salt onto Mrs. Leonhardt’s tablecloth, tamping his handkerchief in her cup, rubbing this mixture on the silver—nodding to himself at this better success.

“I wish he didn’t mess around with things and not ask,” she told Herward.

She would start a sterner policy with her son…else, he might get worse…

She thought he was getting worse, and would have to be seen by a doctor. Was that a question for the corporal, a kind of help she needed?

Herward helped himself to her photo albums. “That’s your husband…?”

“With Anton. He was six.”

She didn’t like this stranger’s pointing to the blond child. She hadn’t remembered it clear enough, what her small son looked like.

But Herward said, “Sure, of course. I knew that.”

3

Tourmaline

A Friend (part four)

(2016, Stephanie Foster)