The Quiet of the Thread

The morning after the assassination in Sarajevo, Brugge did not know what to do with the news. It arrived in the newspaper folded under the baker’s arm, beside a notice about a missing dog and a report of a summer concert. Elise Van Acker read the names of the dead twice. The second time she could say them aloud. She could not have pointed to Sarajevo on the map in her father’s old school atlas without looking first.

Her father, Willem, had opened his tailor’s shop before she was awake. He made men’s jackets and ceremonial waistcoats when anyone could afford them, and she made alterations for the women who kept their clothing until the fabric itself wore through. The shop was the front room of their house. A machine stood near the window and a cutting table occupied the best of the light. In the kitchen her mother, Margriet, kept a ledger of what customers paid, what they promised to pay, and what was never worth asking for again.

“An archduke,” Willem said, passing the newspaper across the table to Pieter. “And his wife.”

Pieter was trying to free a bootlace that had knotted in the rain. “Is that in Austria?”

“Bosnia. Austria-Hungary governs it.”

“That’s quite far for someone to be angry with us.”

Willem gave him a look. “Nobody said they were angry with us.”