Fourth of July

The Fourth of July brings the town’s public celebration into close contact with private illness, caregiving, and difficult truths. Across the novel, its scenes connect the noise of patriotic festivity with quieter changes in Delphine Watzka’s relationships: Cyprian Lazarre’s disclosure clarifies why they cannot be lovers, while Eva Waldvogel’s final holiday gathers family and friends around her as she faces death.

Celebration Around Eva

On the Fourth of July, Waldvogel’s shop closes at noon and the town celebrates. In the orchard, the boys play while the men drink and sing patriotic songs; Sheriff Hock takes the high parts of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” From her sickroom, Eva hears the singing. She also knows the men have hidden Everclear in the gooseberry bush, a small domestic secret that punctures their solemn public display.

The gathering extends into the backyard, where Fidelis Waldvogel sets out chairs and a table with beer sausage, summer sausage, watermelon, and crackers. Beer chills beneath the tomato plants, while the men furtively retrieve the stronger liquor. Even Fidelis, usually purposeful and commanding, joins in with the air of a guilty boy. Cyprian arrives with aged whiskey, adding his own offering to the holiday table.

Care and the Approaching End

Delphine sits with Eva in the small room off the kitchen, chosen in part because its window looks onto the backyard. Eva can watch the boys work on the chinchilla cages they have made from salvaged wire and scrap lumber. Delphine comes to understand the project as a diversion for the children, giving them something to do while their mother is dying. Eva’s humor persists alongside her illness: she jokes about the men hiding the alcohol and continues to treat her condition in a way that resists solemnity.

The holiday also makes care visible as practical work. Delphine prepares food for the supper, including pies, potatoes, and beans, while keeping track of Eva’s pain and the effects of her medication. Doctor Heech has taught her to prepare Magendie’s solution freshly and to administer morphine; she sterilizes the needle and relies on Eva’s expression of pain, rather than a clock, to judge when relief is needed. The feast proceeds outside as Delphine moves between cooking and tending to her friend.

A Relationship Reframed

In another Fourth of July passage, Delphine tells Eva that the boys are playing in the orchard and that the men are already drinking. Eva struggles up to look out the window, then rests again. The women’s view of the celebration is intimate rather than public: they hear the songs and observe the men’s behavior from the sickroom. The holiday’s patriotic performance sits beside Eva’s awareness that her life is nearing its end.

The date’s broader relational significance is clarified by Cyprian’s earlier conversation with Delphine. He explains that his attraction to men is not a consequence of wartime experience or illness: he had loved a man during the war, grieves his death, and has long understood his desire. He asks Delphine to consider her own attraction to men as a way of understanding his answer. She feels a kinship with him and recognizes that they will not be lovers, even though their bond and their future together remain unsettled.

Private Futures and Public Rituals

The holiday scenes place a communal calendar beside lives that do not follow a simple, shared timetable. Cyprian wants a future with Delphine and imagines having children, but he avoids raising the question of sex and pregnancy. After months pass without Delphine becoming pregnant, he proposes marriage with a solid gold ring; she refuses. Later, when she learns that Cyprian has turned toward her friend Clarisse Strub, Delphine recognizes both the shock and the relief in her response. These changes are not resolved by the season’s rituals: celebration offers company and familiar forms, while the characters’ intimate decisions continue on their own course.

The Fourth of July therefore links collective festivity to private thresholds. Its songs, food, and backyard gathering do not conceal Eva’s decline so much as give her a place within the family’s ordinary life as it continues around her. In the contrasting scenes of Delphine and Cyprian, the holiday’s communal setting likewise sharpens the distance between social expectations of marriage and the particular forms of attachment they can sustain.