The Miracle Everyone Longed For

By the time I collected the gift from the general goods shop and made my way back, Herman had already returned to the hotel. He was undressing behind the partition, a weary cast to his face, and being so tall his head jutted up over the top of it, so that I found myself meeting his eyes without meaning to.

“You’re back early.”

I parted my lips, feigning that nothing was amiss. My whole aim had been to get back before Herman, and at that I had failed utterly; barely mastering the dismay welling up in me, I hid the gift box behind my back.

“I told you I’d be quick.”

Herman answered as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“So why are you only getting back now?”

He asked, draping the shirt he’d taken off over the partition.

“I, ah — I was feeling cooped up, so I stepped out for a little while.”

“Out where — and with no maid?”

He added that if he’d known this would happen, he would have sent Elli along with me.

“Only to the general goods shop.”

“All of a sudden?”

“Um, that is…”

Without thinking, I fiddled with the box in my hands, all the while picturing what sort of face he would make if I actually held this gift out to him. Wouldn’t he find it strange, a wife who had begged him for a divorce suddenly producing a homecoming gift? And was it even the right thing to do, giving Herman this now? I cut off the thoughts as they came chasing one another’s tails and gave my head a light shake.

“It’s just — thinking it over, it seemed I’d never given you a proper gift, Herman.”

“What gift?”

“Well — it’s a bit late to think of it now, what with the triumphal ceremony already come and gone, but…”

I brought out the lines I’d prepared one careful step at a time, struggling all the while to keep down how badly my nerves were strung.

“A homecoming gift.”

It was, to be sure, a gift I’d gotten up as a pretext for my outing, and yet for some reason, holding it out set me trembling, as though I were handing over something of my own true heart.

“I picked it out in a hurry, so I don’t know whether it’ll be to your liking. It’s nothing so grand.”

Perhaps that was why I kept tacking on things I needn’t have said at all.

As I stood dithering before the partition, Herman, who had been watching me all the while, abruptly stepped out from behind it. In that same instant I was at a loss for where to put my eyes.

“W-wait a moment!”

Without so much as a shirt on, Herman planted himself before me, bold as brass. I hastily turned my head away and backed off, but there was nowhere to flee in that shut-up room.

“I’m ready.”
“R-ready for what?”
“Ready to receive my gift, I said.”
“It hardly takes getting ready for…”

He did not seem to feel the slightest shame at baring his whole upper body. Herman Ernst squared his shoulders proudly and held out his hand.

He hasn’t a shred of shame, it seems.

Not that it was a body with anything to be ashamed of, of course; the galling part was that he knew as much perfectly well himself.

I couldn’t hide my fluster at his sudden move, yet the next moment, at the sight of the hand he held out, I faltered in spite of myself.

“…”

From his forearms to his chest, his stomach, his sides, wherever my gaze happened to fall, his body was covered in rough, knotted scars. This was less the body of a man made for allure than that of a soldier who had kept his nation safe.

He must have been through a great deal.

What sort of time had Herman passed through, before he could stand here and face me whole and unharmed like this? As the thought took hold, the tension knotted into me from head to toe seemed to melt away like snow.

Yes — there’s nothing so strange about giving a token of thanks to the nation’s savior.

Having found a plausible excuse to justify myself, only then did I set the wrapped box down on the man’s hand.

“Here.”

The box was small to begin with, and set on that great hand it looked smaller still.

Plain and trifling though it might seem at a glance, Herman untied the ribbon as gently as if he’d received the most precious gift in the world.

I ought to have taken the time to choose something a little finer.

Watching the man who had received more gifts than anyone else that day open this one brimming with anticipation, I felt a faint regret come over me.

“A fountain pen.”

Herman said it as he opened the box and drew out the pen, holding it in one hand as though he might try it that very instant.

“It’s nothing special, so please use it freely.”

His eyes studied the pen intently, and the longer he spent examining the gift, the more my embarrassment doubled.

“The whole Empire awaited your miracle.”

Herman read aloud the phrase engraved on the pen. It was the line I’d had inscribed at the general goods shop, in place of his name.

“A line from the old legend, is it.”

The moment he saw the engraved phrase, he knew its source at once, for it was a maxim any citizen of the Empire of Balter would know, one held almost as an emblem.

The whole Empire awaits our miracle. Seize victory, and return to the arms of those you love.

The words came from a speech by the first Emperor, the one that had crowned the single most important moment in all the founding legend of the Empire of Balter. It was the very speech that had raised up an army with its morale guttering out, on the eve of the last battle of the war of independence.

“There’s no grand meaning to it. They said I could have letters engraved, and it seemed a fitting phrase for a homecoming gift, that’s all.”

Perhaps Herman’s homecoming was the greater miracle of the two, more even than the return of the Independence Corps; everyone, after all, had believed him dead, and nothing more. But to go out of my way and load that phrase with some grand meaning would be nothing but a deceit.

It was only something I’d bought to make an excuse, after all.

Mouthing flattery didn’t suit my nature. I only hoped this fountain pen would be no more than one gift among the many, many he had received.

“So you think my homecoming was as great a thing as the return of the Independence Corps?”

There was something composed in his question, and yet somehow I sensed a deep resonance beneath it. I hesitated a moment, then answered with care.

“Because it was a miracle everyone had longed for.”

It was so, beyond any doubt. Not a few had waited for Herman Ernst to come home alive; indeed, one might go so far as to say the whole of the Empire had.

“Then the Empire that awaited my miracle — are you counted among it too?”

All at once, Herman smiled playfully.

“That, I quite like.”

I wanted to say something, but as I watched Herman’s face brighten little by little, I couldn’t bring myself to open my mouth. I wavered over which to give him, a lie of fine color or a barren truth.

“It’s nothing but a common word of blessing.”
“I know. And yet — a little.”

Herman gave a light shrug.

“It feels strange.”
“What does?”
“I’ve been congratulated on my return the whole day long — and only now does it feel real, that I’ve come home.”

He ran his thumb slowly over the engraved phrase, as though savoring it, as though trying to feel the meaning the words held through his very fingertips.

“…You’ll wear it away.”

At my needless remark, Herman snatched his hand away, startled.

“That would be a bit of a problem.”
“Hardly a problem. If the engraving fades, I’ll have it done again for you.”
“Then I’ll rub at it with an easy mind.”

I couldn’t for the life of me read what he meant by that sly retort, whether he was in earnest, or joking, or merely saying it for form’s sake. It left me a touch flustered, and while I hovered there hesitating, Herman slowly tipped up the point of my chin and met my eyes.

“It’s good to hear. A single word from you, over a hundred from anyone else.”

If there was a problem, it was that he was far, far too honest.

His voice was low and soft, but the weight it carried left me unable to breathe. He had an uncommon gift for pricking at a person’s guilt, and the emotions knotting themselves into complicated tangles within me only piled up, layer upon layer, not one of them coming loose.

Herman Ernst.

I turned his name over silently to myself. A single word from me, better to hear than a hundred from anyone else, was it? Sad to say, I held the very opposite of his sentiment.

Every word Herman tossed my way, every look he turned on me, set my heart to wavering so. And the reason for it I could not begin to understand.

“I’m glad it’s to your liking.”

I hadn’t the courage to look Herman in the face, and hastily turned my eyes away. Perhaps because I was straining so hard to keep my composure, my voice came out as dry as could be.

“I ought to wash up as well. Elli should be back from the palace by now, don’t you think? You must be tired — do rest. I’ll go and look in on her.”

The words came spilling out of me in a rush. Merely being in the same room as Herman drained a great deal out of me, and so, before the conversation had even ended, I turned on my heel and made for the door.

I had commissioned the matter to Detective Richter, I had set up a means of reaching him, I had carried off my outing safely under a plausible pretext. And yet.

Why…

Everything was unfolding just as I had planned, so why was it that Herman Ernst alone would not? That his very existence should weigh on me like this had been no part of the plan, and these tangled feelings he stirred up in me I had foreseen even less.

I could think of nothing but that I must put an end to my dealings with Herman, and the sooner the better.

I mustn’t let myself be swept up in this. Not for anything.

I could no longer allow myself to be helplessly swayed by Herman. A heart in such turmoil as this had never been any part of the plan.