High as the Waters Rise

by Anja Kampmann

  He paused and wiped the sweat off his brow with his forearm.

  Anyway, he said, then I really got the thing, later, once I was here. And now and then they actually have some use for it in the village. And I drive a few rounds here around the house, you know. Who could’ve ever guessed that it would be like this—that I’d be careening around a place like this—without Federica. He grew softer. As if it were my born right.

  He broke off.

  The boy with the unibrow looked at Alois. As if there were still something unfamiliar about him, as if something stuck to the sentences he exchanged with the foreign man.

  I’ll come along, Alois said. Enni! he called. Dai!

  Enni, the girl, came running around the corner and climbed up on the riding mower, where she sat down next to Alois and waved. Alois started the motor, and the boy ran beside them.

  They watched them go. Elena stood next to Waclaw and for a while she didn’t move. Then she spoke to him.

  You must be happy to be so far away from it all?

  She had high cheekbones and a large, narrow nose. He tried to smile and shook his head slowly.

  It’s not so far away, he said.

  He followed her into the village. She walked quickly. Her steps were limber, it was a long path, a shortcut, she knew every rock, and he felt clumsy next to her. I’m going to show you something, she said.

  But he wasn’t ready for the procession and the weeping women and Elena, who dragged him into the little chapel where he stood behind the last row while a priest sang, and the few people who’d come looked at the ground and crossed themselves while Waclaw with his high, shiny forehead towered above them, not knowing whether anyone saw him standing there, and whether it would be enough if he thought here about that morning and the mirror-smooth sea and Mátyás’s helmet and the sweatband that was still damp when he found it. At first he hadn’t wanted to touch it, and then he’d stowed it in Mátyás’s duffel, quickly, with the other things. For a moment he’d understood that no one would ever wash the sweaty thing. He could stand in this chapel as if he were in another time, he could imagine the altar boys like an optical illusion on that water, as if they were going out farther and farther, on the exhaustive search for Mátyás in their white, wind-blown robes. He stood motionless amid it all.

  21

  Snow

  The festival was set for the coming evening, and when he came early to the loft, Alois had filled a light blue plastic tub with water, and for a while they watched the birds excitedly fluttering their wings as they bathed. A little way from the barn, a girl was doing gymnastics on the cut grass; she moved differently than the girls from the village, her movements smacked of lessons and the city. Under the knotted turquoise shirt, she stretched her legs unwaveringly in the air. She shone with sweat. It was still early, the first cars were drawing toward the barn where the festival was to take place. A scuffed frisbee lay on the side of the road, forgotten.

  After a while, Waclaw lugged the dirty water to the next slope. Then he stood there and watched it trickle away. He knew Alois was waiting for him. He thought of the paper crown and the home, the little mouth organ that the carer had played, and the plastic covering over his shoes, which he hadn’t taken off, he was in such a hurry to leave, over the golden fields that lay all around the home. The reaped stalks broke under his steps, he walked, something came undone in him, the carer blew into something that looked like a plastic flute with keys. The melody, the paper crown had followed him in the next months at sea, he’d thought of it when he heard the organ in Malta. For a while it was as if he couldn’t think of anything else.

  He sat by the loft without any idea what the festival was supposed to be. He saw Alois standing there, small and old, he released the pigeons, as if the whole world were up above. He waved Waclaw closer and seemed excited, though the few people who had gathered by the barn would likely take little notice of his birds. Finally Alois lowered the flag, as if deep in thought. Mia turchina, he said softly. My blue. Then he laid his arm on Waclaw’s shoulder—light, almost tender. Do you see the big blue one flying ahead?

  Listen, he said then.

  I want you to take her north with you. You can judge the weather and the distance. She has enough reserves for a very long flight.

  Waclaw looked at him. The birds were a distant murmur.

  What’s the point? You want to race her?

  Alois shook his head.

  He looked at the shady mountainsides. Then he looked at Waclaw.

  Waclaw smoothed his sleeves and looked past Alois into the valley.

  You’ve never done that, Alois, that far. And I don’t see anyone here who would voluntarily drive up there.

  Alois didn’t seem to hear him. He looked at the flock, which was soon a distant point over the hills.

  I don’t know if you’ll make it all the way back with her. But she’ll fly, as far as she can. My wife went a little crazy up there, you know that, it took a lot of convincing to get her to change her mind, to come back here. I almost had her sold on it when she died.

  And then—a whole closet full of furs she’d poured all our money into. She always had to be warm.

  Waclaw remembered a small, shadowy silhouette behind the windowpane, a face that was always too pale and too heavily made up. In all the years, he’d never seen Federica with the pigeons.

  But there’s nothing there anymore, Alois. I’m not planning to drive back there. I have a life—

  Alois pointed to his eyes again.

  I’ve seen you these last few days.

  They stood there awhile. Waclaw stroking his chin, seeming to search the distant slopes with his eyes, as if they, or anything on that morning, knew the answer.

  They heard the pigeons again. A hint of the coming winter over the mountains. This picture, in which they were both only a tiny part. Just something warm in front of these great slopes, something like a very old melody.

  Waclaw didn’t look at him.

  He said that he had little to take care of, and that time had done that for him, and that there wasn’t much there that he could pick up again. Alois said time would take care of nothing and would take away nothing, it was a blind animal and couldn’t be relied on. The only thing that mattered was the person, and how he stood, and that he could make promises and give the world meaning, and that was the only thing that extended beyond him.

  Waclaw said promises were just words, but Alois responded that that wasn’t true and every child knew it. He said children were smarter, and the weak.

  Then they were silent.

  The picture showed nothing but the cool air that surrounded them. Perhaps a few lizards on the rocks, and grasses, still wet from the dew on this first cool morning.

  Drive back there again, Alois said. You’re still young. Again he stretched the u sound in young, but Waclaw could hardly hear it anymore.

  In the picture, the taller, thinner man moved up the path and up the slope. He walked. A thin film of sweat formed on his skin but only cooled him as his steps grew slower. He walked until he seemed to have arrived in the same picture that surrounded both of them. There was no one. There was the crunching of rocks.

  Federica. There’s the train station. The shadows behind the low, grilled windows. A pair of buzzards circling slowly under the massive fleet of clouds. The sky a matte light blue.

  She stands in the shade under the low metal roof of the train station, half propped on her Enzo, who holds the two tickets in his hand and says the numbers of the seats aloud. Summer 1963, they’ve booked 23 and 24, next to each other, though they could have lived for a while off the surcharge for the reservation. Seat numbers, so Federica doesn’t have to stand on this journey, when she can’t lift any of the three heavy suitcases.

  She wears a simple suit that’s a bit too big for her. Enzo, her husband, wears a plaid flat cap. His shoes gleam. They’re both a bit nervous and they both know that the others are just getting up, and that they’ll be missed in the fi
elds.

  It was only four weeks ago, and she still has pains. No, my Enzo, we must go, we must. She can’t stand the plantation any longer, the swampy ground near Bolzano, the mice that nibble the hard-won harvest.

  The nearby factory like a threat.

  She can still see the faces of the two women, the cellar with the green cloths and the hot needles. They were used to the girls shaking with fear when they spread their legs. Federica had suffered unthinkable pain. When they changed trains in Bochum, everything was only just healed.

  Alois tried hard. They found a little apartment on Bocholter Straße, hardly more than a room. He couldn’t stand it underground for more than half a year, then he switched to the coking plant. The flames were hotter than anything he could ever have imagined.

  They thought Federica just needed time. But she wasn’t in shock.

  At first she prayed like a crazy person.

  But after they’d been there awhile and Federica could understand the news and also that there was a pill that could have spared her all of it, she decided that the priest was to blame. They’d been too poor for a child back then. Over time she became convinced that the whole country was to blame. Ridotta in questo stato dal paese! That’s how she put it. On Sundays she went to church nonetheless, when the bells rang—how else could she have met the other women.

  That evening Alois took Waclaw with him to the village, there was a dance in the dim light of the little hall, in the fiddle tones of a few violins, in the offhandedness of cigarette butts held in wrinkled hands. Men with day-old clothes on their bodies, who knew each other in a wink, in the color with which they called out a name in greeting.

  A puppet show was performed on an improvised wooden stage: pig, witch, Kasperle—representing a media mogul and a corrupt parliament—and between them a monkey, feverishly trying to save the world. In the end, even Waclaw had to smile. And there was Alois, among them, but quieter, Alois, who didn’t clap or keep the beat with his foot, peering out of the barn door, a mild darkness over the hills. You won’t get free of it, he said, and sat with Waclaw at a table at the edge of the festivities. They drank anise schnapps, glass upon glass.

  The high notes of a violin.

  Outside on the meadow a fire was lit, people clapped. Waclaw found their clapping too loud.

  They looked out.

  Do you remember the old bowling alley? Alois asked finally. You earned your pocket money down there. Setting up all the pins.

  He spoke softly, as if what he said was meant only for Waclaw.

  The smooth wooden lanes under the Birkeneck.

  He didn’t look at Waclaw.

  I’m still there. The ball rolls and rolls. But there are no pins.

  You all drank your share down there.

  Alois laughed.

  Yes, but that doesn’t change anything.

  Again, Alois looked at his hands. And then you come back, he said, and there’s something different about you, it’s like a smell you bring with you.

  Some schnapps sloshed over the edge of their glasses when they clinked. And Waclaw wasn’t tired. He’d heard Mátyás’s voice as he snorted the stuff, it was a last little bit, sewed into the seam of a hoodie, why did he just remember it today, little crystals, snow always helps, Mátyás had said, amphetamine, speed, and how else were they supposed to manage the last hours of the shift, again and again. There was the clear smell of lavender in Alois’s room, and Waclaw snorted the stuff and was no longer tired. He’d unpacked the animal and set it on the windowsill, take her north with you, then came the snow, bright and light, and he was no longer tired. He watched the animal begin to snarl softly, no land, no water, the frog’s feet and the lion’s mouth, the weathered white stone, hardly bigger than a piece of soap. The underside of the animal sat flat on the wood of the windowsill, its edge marred by a few brown cracks. The animal crouched there, staring forward. A lion’s head with ears cocked as if stalking, the mane passing almost seamlessly into its back. But it was no lion. In the front, two teeth stuck out crookedly from its maw, more reminiscent of human teeth, of a hairy human mouth with a wide snout. The brownish filth of many years clung everywhere. The animal had frog’s feet, it spread its webbed toes on the stone ground, it laid back its lion’s ears as if to attack. It seemed to have come from the water and yet wasn’t native to the land. It resembled him. The rolling eyes, the distrust when he spoke with strangers. He saw the lion’s fur on the legs. The body didn’t seem like that of a lion. There was something sluggish about it, something wimpy, round, as if the tense facial expression didn’t transfer to the rest of it. As if there were some weakness, a paralysis, an infirm base. As if the animal that had done no more than threaten for too long were now stuck to the ground. No longer belonging to the one or the other, neither to the water nor to the land. Waclaw looked at the door. He’d heard steps in the hall. Alois knocked, he followed him to the barn, they drank, and he was wide awake when Alois talked about that bowling alley that no one here had ever seen. Not the brown upholstered furniture at the edges of the room. Not the numbers of the digital clock that glowed red after everyone was long gone. The boy with the unibrow stood in the corner and looked at them. Waclaw recognized some faces from the chapel.

  You don’t have to be scared of my people, Alois said. I know, Waclaw said. And they both knew he’d said it a bit too fast.

  They saw Elena in the half-darkness of the barn. She stood at the edge and watched the two older women next to her talking.

  You could dance, Alois said.

  Waclaw nodded. We could.

  But he stayed sitting and felt Alois scrutinizing him, as if he could see through him, all the way to the silent throbbing that Waclaw had often noticed spreading within him, as if it could split everything he saw, and the parts would sink, but there was no bottom to catch them, no image fell into place.

  And while the puppets lay limp over the edge of the stage, while babies were carried home through the night and a few couples danced, Waclaw sat there, and only among all the people did he notice how much he would have liked to tell Milena about it, at least about the dry clay of the barn floor where the children ran barefoot until late in the night.

  He stood up and went out. The meadow was cut short and even. All day, the girls hadn’t been able to wait for the festival, and now the soles of their feet were green and their eyes shimmered with weariness. He thought of his father and of Alois, the greasy eyeglasses, his damned pigeons that couldn’t turn anything around for him. What did he want, what did Alois want from him, take her north with you, he walked, Waclaw walked, he wasn’t tired, and Alois walked with him and time walked with him, and he could see him, Alois, the slight trembling of his hands, he could hear him, you were never alone with the pitcarts and their steel tails, you never cursed them, the estate and the everyday faces, we formed you from a lump of dust underground, you’re made of a cloud that someone blew into his hands in the cold, your parents loved you, how desperately they wanted to give you this world where you didn’t belong any more than they did, Waclaw looked back, but they didn’t want to believe it of you, he stumbled, what kind of architect designed these lives, wrapped in your shabby bedroom curtain, he was the shadow under the fork dropped during a dinnertime row, he was the seam of the dress that was let out, he was the dropped cigarette and the half moon over the chicken coop, he was the ringing of the altar boys, Waclaw scrambled back to his feet, walked on, and the moped with a full tank at the gas station, he was the loneliness of the darts player and the steam that hung over the pithead baths while the men scrubbed one another’s backs, over the heads of you boys he was the silence in which you pressed your rulers into the paper to underline the theorems you had to memorize. Waclaw took big strides through the cut grass.

  Alois stayed in the barn. From a distance, Waclaw saw a grille dragged over the embers of the fire, sparks flew, the hills were outlined in dark blue. Two girls held sticks in the flames, whipped them over their heads, and ran through t
he darkness with them like torches.

  He hadn’t expected her out there. Elena stood close to the fire, and the wind came from the side and pressed her dress gently against her, he could see the contours of her body. She looked aside into the darkness of the meadow, in the direction where the two girls had disappeared, the embers crackled, and gray wisps of smoke rose in the direction of the mountains. She looked at Waclaw, and then she looked aside.

  He left. He walked quickly in the direction of the mountains. In the darkness he took the shortcut across the field, and everything was light, and everything was spinning, and he wasn’t tired, he had another bottle with him, and the night was a silent melody, there was Milena, laying fresh sheets on the deck chairs, while the pasty bodies of the hotel guests floated as if weightless before her in the hot salt water, underwater music, as if the world had nothing more to offer them. She stood at the edge, a pretty person who meant nothing to them, for nine złoty an hour.

  Waclaw walked. The meadow was uneven, and he tore his jacket climbing over a low fence. Then he stopped and stood for a long time, tracing the tear with his finger.