by Ursula Hegi
Their eyes locked with his, the women encouraged him to talk about his wife. They found they could captivate him by sharing their memories about Gertrud: they reminded him how—as children—he and Gertrud had built kites of red silk paper and thin strips of wood, decorated with tails made of string and paper bows; they teased him about how nervous he’d been at fifteen when he’d asked Gertrud to go dancing with him; they described the day of his wedding and Gertrud’s radiance as she walked on his arm from St. Martin’s Church; they tempted him with fragments of half-forgotten incidents about Gertrud and fed his yearning by fabricating the rest.
It was from those overheard conversations that Trudi began to gather what her mother’s life had been like before she had given birth to her, and she drank in those stories, relieved that no one spoke of the few mad years before her mother’s death.
When the women were near Leo Montag, they felt coveted yet virtuous, and if they became uneasy with the yearning he evoked in them—a yearning that kept them from sleeping or praying because, say, they’d wonder what his hands would feel like if he were to loosen their hair and caress their faces in one long-drawn motion; or if that first time, that very first time, he would take them lying down or standing up against the wall of the locked pay-library—they could reassure themselves that nothing, really, had happened and that nothing was about to happen, a conviction that made it possible for them to extend their tongues to receive the blessed sacrament and return to their husbands with their honor intact.
And when they’d hear the translucent voice of Leo’s Zwerg child in the church choir, floating from the high balcony, they’d touch their bellies through the fabric of their coats, reminding themselves of the fate of the one woman whose womb had given shelter to Leo’s seed, and affirm their resolution to stay faithful to their husbands. Trudi’s voice would shine during mass—high and strong and clear—soaring above the torrent of organ music. It was a voice that evoked your earliest longings—those ecstasies that had attached themselves safely to religion before you’d been given your family’s approval to aim those passions at one particular Catholic boy. To name those feelings any sooner could have led you to sin. It was wiser to postpone, to harness that passion into singing in the choir or swooning at the communion bench, or feeling Christ’s ultimate pain—at three o’clock each Good Friday—as the nails were pounded into his sacred palms.
As the women listened to Trudi’s pure voice, they knew it was a voice you could never return to, a voice you could never reclaim as yours once your body had known the caresses of another body, once you understood what those old ecstasies had strained toward all along. Yet, some autumn at dawn, say, when you were the first to rise and light the kitchen fire, you might wonder if the passions of those women who had become nuns had surpassed your own passions, and you’d feel jealous of their power because they were the ones who taught your children and whose authority was held above yours.
Nuns shrouded their passions as well as their limbs. Nuns concealed their hands in their sleeves, baring only a fragment of their faces—eyes, nose, and mouth—scant evidence of womanhood. Though some of the nuns were bitter and petty women, the very best of them had eyes that contained a passion so pure that you could never look at them for long. Leo Montag had almost achieved that ecstasy in his eyes again—as if to validate that tasteless joke that his friend Emil Hesping kept circulating about people turning into virgins if they hadn’t had it—and everyone knew what it was—for five years.
Though Emil Hesping still hadn’t married, there was no danger of him turning into a virgin. People wondered what his brother, the bishop, would say if he knew about all those women—not just from Burgdorf but also from other towns—who’d been seen with Emil Hesping. Even walking on his arm across the church square was enough to taint your reputation. He had an ever-changing sequence of women except for one, Frau Simon, who had remained constant in his life. They’d flaunted their lust in public before she’d married her husband, and since her divorce he’d returned to her between his countless liaisons. With each year he seemed to look younger: his face had no lines, and his skull was still as smooth as ever.
All winter, Trudi kept waiting for the weather to become mild enough to swim again, and the first warm Sunday in April she got up at six, pulled on her swimsuit, a dress and jacket over it, and headed for the river with her dog.
Swallows rose from the willows when she ran down the far side of the dike, and for a moment the beat of their wings drowned the rush of the Rhein, which had been straining against its boundaries that spring without leaving its bed. Last fall’s leaves covered the path, matted and brown, so unlike the airy shapes that had drifted from branches in showers of red and yellow. The grass—still dead and yellow-brown—lay flat against the earth, and the crowns of the trees looked tangled. A few bricks, half broken, were strewn among the pebbles. The sky was blue, but dark gray streaks ran across it, blocking the sun intermittently.
This early in the morning, no one else was on the path. The river looked moss green. Sometimes—even in the span of an hour—Trudi had seen it change from brown to gray and green, even silver, depending on how the light fell. Two ducks fluttered from the bare bushes as she neared the bank. She stepped across blackberry brambles that had grown over the path. In a few months she would come here to gather the purple-black berries and red currants, pour them into a deep soup plate with milk and sugar, and eat them with a slice of dark bread.
A fine column of mist rose near the river, thick enough to look like smoke from a fire, and for a moment she felt as if she were no longer alone, as if something were warning her to stay away. She called out to Seehund, just to hear the sound of her voice, but kept walking toward the mist. A branch tugged at her skirt. She froze. Her eyes skittered toward the dike. The entire hillside was moving, shifting each rotting leaf, each blade of grass, as if about to form an immense wave. The whole dike was whispering, whispering brown words, whispering, “Come up here, now, now.…” She felt those words, felt someone there, calling her. She cut through the bushes toward the river, away from the voices and the dike, and when she reached the willow with the braided length of rope, the gray mist was just that—mist—and already the sun was diluting it, and the dike was just a solid ridge of earth built to protect the town from the river.
The bay was calm, and the choppy current surged past the tip of the jetty. She walked beyond the jetty toward the far end of the elbowshaped embankment, where she took off her jacket and dress, hid them with her shoes between two bushes, and adjusted the straps of her swimsuit. Seehund was turning, sniffing the ground, before he settled on a patch of sand at the base of the bushes. As Trudi stepped into the water, it was far colder than the air, but she didn’t let that stop her. Like a frog, she cut beneath the surface, brushed against some slimy rocks, and veered to swim into the deeper water. Here, the river belonged to her. Feathery strokes propelled her forward as she came up for air. From the bank, her dog watched her through sleepy eyes, his snout resting on his crossed paws. The rest of his body was hidden among the branches. She waved to him before submerging herself again. Eyes wide, she swam straight into the brown-green particles of mud that rose from the bottom. As the sun grazed them, they turned amber as if to encapsule her like that drop of amber Frau Blau wore around her neck on a silver chain; her Dutch great-grandfather had found it in the North Sea: in its center sat a tiny, bone-colored crab that looked as if—any moment—it could crawl out of that translucent drop of amber and up Frau Blau’s neck.
Trudi kicked her feet, hard, heading for the shallow regions that were shaded by the willows. She shot up from the water and shook the river from her hair. In three months the circus would be back in town, and she’d bring Pia here to swim. As she tried to imagine the Zwerg woman in the water next to her, she couldn’t see her in anything except that glittering dress. Drifting on her back, she kicked her feet and hands, making silvery loops. She’d look for fabric like that for Pia—something silv
ery and swirling—and sew a swimsuit for her. Smiling to herself, she glanced toward Seehund. He was sitting up, his head raised, his ears alert. From the other side of the jetty came voices.
Quickly, she lowered herself beneath the water and swam toward the end of the jetty. Holding on to the rocks to keep from being sucked into the current, she pulled herself out to where she could see: there were four of them—Georg, Hans-Jürgen, Fritz Hansen, and Paul Weinhart—absorbed in a competition of making water farts. Each artillery of bubbles was greeted with hoots and laughter. They were showing off for each other, taking loud gulps of air and holding their breaths as they tried to force the air through their intestines. When the bubbles broke through the surface, they leapt back in mock horror.
With an odd mix of fear and excitement, Trudi saw them the way they would never let any girl or adult see them, and she knew that by watching them without their knowledge she was taking something from them, something they’d never yield willingly to her. Those were the secrets she liked best—the ones that were stolen, the ones that made her tongue go light in her mouth at the thought of being caught, like that day in the bakery when Herr Hansen had sold Brötchen to Frau Buttgereit while hissing at her to keep her husband in her own bed; or that evening when she’d watched from the kitchen window as Frau Blau buried a small bundle next to her back steps; or that afternoon Frau Abramowitz had pressed her breasts against the arm of Trudi’s father when she’d asked him to get a book for her from one of the upper shelves in the library.
Only Trudi’s eyes and forehead were above water as she spied on the boys; she would raise her face long enough to take a deep breath, then submerge herself again. Seehund had settled down, and she was glad that the bushes protected him from being seen by the boys.
When Georg clambered into the willow, took off his swim trunk and draped it across a branch, she closed her eyes for a moment, not from embarrassment, but rather from compassion that—in his efforts to be like the other boys—he went further than they would have. The boys screamed with laughter and applauded. Georg grinned and waved both arms at them. Without his clothes he looked thin, defenseless, endangered even. His hair was trimmed so short you could see the bones of his skull.
Paul Weinhart cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted. “There’s a naked boy here …”
Startled, Georg dropped his hands and covered his private parts.
Hans-Jürgen Braunmeier whistled.
“… and his name is Georg Weiler,” Paul continued.
“Shut your mouth!” Georg grabbed the braided rope and swung himself into the river. He dropped near Paul and started splashing him.
“A naked boy …” Fritz and Hans-Jürgen howled.
Georg tried to get out of the river and back to his swimsuit, which dangled high on that branch, but the other three blocked his way, their arms like wings of a windmill, flinging gauzy sheets of water at him.
“Let me out!”
As Trudi heard the tears behind his voice, those images of Georg leaping naked into the river tumbled into a story, and she felt a familiar power building in her—the power that came from her choice to tell or not to tell this story. And she felt something else that she knew well—a connection as potent as love or hate to everyone whose story entered her and began to ripen into something that belonged to her.
Georg retreated from the boys toward the open river. Kicking water with his feet, he swam on his back toward the end of the jetty, as though he’d decided to get out on the other side of it. As the three boys took up the chase, Trudi ducked between the rocks, hoping Georg would stop or that the others would catch him before he’d see her.
But he bumped right into her. Alarmed, he swung around, stared at her, and as she stared back into his sand-colored eyes, she was aware of his father who’d drowned in these waters that surrounded their bodies. Georg shivered as though he’d just had the same thought, and it seemed almost possible to her that they could both preserve the silence of their encounter and turn away from one another as if it had never happened.
But the other boys swam up behind him.
“That’s why Georg took his pants off.”
“Georg loves Trudi.”
“Shut your trap!” Fists up, Georg threw himself against the other boys.
“Georg loves the Zwerg”.
She pushed herself away from the rocks and beneath the water, darting away from them. A frog. She was a frog. But her legs were mere hindrances, and her arms felt too short to move the masses of water that pressed against her. A hand caught her right ankle and yanked her up. Hans-Jürgen.
She coughed and spit water. “Let go.”
Seehund ran along the bank, barking, but as soon as his paws touched that damp line where the river darkened the sand, he leapt back, yelped, and advanced again as if fighting with himself to overcome his ancient fear of water.
Fritz Hansen grabbed Trudi by a strap of her swimsuit.
“Let go,” she hissed, surprised when the boys dropped their hands from her. As she tried to touch bottom with her feet, the river was too deep, and she felt it again—that strange foreboding she’d ignored on her way to the river, that leaf-brown whisper of the dike, the column of mist.…
The back of his bottom chalk white, Georg was scrambling up the tree for his swimsuit while the other boys fanned around Trudi, their arms and legs stirring the water to keep themselves suspended. Their faces floated at the same level with hers, and it felt odd to see straight into their eyes instead of having to look up.
“What are you doing here?” Fritz demanded.
“Swimming. Like you.”
“You were spying on us,” Hans-Jürgen said.
“I was not.” She felt furious at them. For finding her. For ruining her place. “I was here first.”
Seehund’s bark was at a high pitch. He was racing up and down the beach, his paws kicking up sand whenever he turned. Paul Weinhart dove and came up with a flat rock, which he flung at the dog. Seehund howled.
Trudi pushed Paul’s shoulder. “Leave him alone.”
“You make him shut up then.”
“Down,” she cried. “Down, Seehund.”
The dog stopped. Body quivering, he lowered his hind legs halfway as if ready to leap up again.
“Down, Seehund.”
He whimpered and lay down.
“Georg,” Paul yelled. “Trudi says she wants you to take your pants off again.”
“Liar,” she cried.
His back to the river, Georg struggled into his shirt, his pants and shoes.
“She wants all of us to take our pants off,” Hans-Jürgen declared.
Paul and Fritz laughed, high nervous laughs, as they grabbed Trudi’s arms and dragged her toward the beach. Gathering gray and brown pebbles in the shallow water, Hans-Jürgen pelted Seehund as he charged toward them.
“Go home, Seehund,” Trudi shouted. “Down—Home—”
But Seehund anchored his teeth in Fritz Hansen’s calf. The boys let go of Trudi and fell upon the dog with fists and rocks.
“Stop it,” she screamed, “stop,” and heard Georg’s voice too, “Don’t hurt him.”
Seehund kept fighting, but each time he was kicked or hit, his attempts became weaker.
“Go home,” she shouted, tears in her mouth. She wished he’d run from those feet that kicked him away from her, but he kept yelping, coming back, until Paul hurled a sharp rock at him and Seehund fell over and lay still. When he tried to get up, his hind legs wouldn’t straighten. Whimpering, he dragged himself toward Trudi, the whites of his eyes showing.
“Let her go.” The skin around Georg’s mouth was taut.
“So the Zwerg is all yours?” Fritz grinned.
“Don’t be stupid.” A slow, red burn stained Georg’s neck and rose to his face.
Paul’s hand shot out and pinched Trudi’s breast.
She cried out.
“Your turn,” he challenged Georg.
Georg’s face stiffe
ned. His eyes were right on Trudi, glassy and frightened, without seeing her. He tried to laugh. “Who wants her?”
Although he looked as though he were about to run, he stayed with his friends, even when they dragged Trudi across the meadow and the dike. She screamed, trying to wrest her arms—those useless arms that were solid but not strong—from the boys, and once she broke away, embarrassed that her legs, those Zwerg legs, were moving in the old sideways waddle that she’d tried to unlearn. Feeling the pulse of hate in her temples, she ran from them, faster than she’d known she could run, until Fritz tripped her. Seehund stayed further and further behind. Soon she could no longer see him. Her bare feet and legs got scratched, and she didn’t know if she felt more horrified at the prospect of being rescued by others who’d see her body half naked in her swim suit, or at not being rescued before the boys got her to the Braunmeiers’ barn—because that’s where she realized they were heading. When she kept screaming, one of the hands—she couldn’t even tell who it belonged to—clamped across her mouth while she was tugged and pushed around the back of the barn and into the side door that faced away from the farmhouse.
Slow patterns of muted light and shadows wove through the dust motes, and the highest rafters were hazy, enveloped by a viscous layer of air. Two metal pails were propped upside down on a table to dry. She hadn’t been in the barn since that day Hans-Jürgen had killed the kitten, and that vast, lofty space still reminded her of a church. At the same time there was the scent of the cows, a forever kind of warm scent that, somehow, made what happened so much worse, and what happened was warm and in some ways cold—the cold of the huge space, the warmth of cowering in one small space that was ablaze with the heat of her fear and the heat of their breaths and the heat of the cows, though nothing, nothing could touch that ice-cold space deep inside her, the space they couldn’t reach, the space that could freeze them to death because she finally knew that praying would not make her grow, knew that the Zwerg had closed around who she really was, knew herself in a deep and distant way as she was and had been and would be, while a lifetime of images passed through her soul; and the worst thing was not that the boys tore off her swimsuit and fingered her breasts—that was terrible enough, but they would have done that to other girls too; no, the worst thing was their curiosity, those hands that explored her difference, those voices that laughed at the way her neck grew thick from her torso, at the short span of her legs as they pulled them apart—not to plant themselves in her, no—but to see how far her thighs could be spread, and what made all of this even worse was that, even here, she inspired their curiosity, not their desire, and yet, and yet, through her rage, she felt a dreadful longing to be liked by them, to have them see beyond her body inside her where she knew she was like every other girl.