Stones From the River

by Ursula Hegi

  “You were afraid.”

  “A coward.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Remember how small Stefan was when he ran off to America?”

  “He seemed big to me then. I was only eight or nine.”

  The old tailor blew his nose and hiccuped.

  “Fear,” Leo said, “is a strange thing. It strips off masks.… In some people it brings out the lowest instincts, while others become more compassionate. Both have to do with survival. But the choice is ours.”

  “I made the wrong choice.”

  “But you didn’t stay with it.”

  Herr Blau nodded, grateful for Leo’s answer, but his tears came harder as he mumbled something that was impossible to understand.

  The following week Frau Simon received an official notification from the SS that she was to be relocated. She was instructed to bring food for three days, one suitcase weighing no more than fifty kilos, one backpack or travel bag, and one roll of blankets. Twenty-eight other Jews received the same document and were removed from the community along with her. Ever since Kristallnacht, the SS had assumed control of Jewish policy, priding itself on rationality, efficiency, and order. To avoid public disturbances whenever possible, Jews were to be duped into thinking they were simply being moved to a new life in the East.

  Frau Abramowitz, who had refused to leave her house ever since the yellow stars had to be worn, received the first letter from Frau Simon. They were being held in Poland. Their trip had taken three days and three nights. Five of the older people and one infant boy had died on the train. Several children were ill with coughs and fever. Their quarters were cold and cramped and shabby. They had never received their luggage.

  They needed medicine.

  They needed food.

  They needed clothing.

  It was that need which drove Frau Abramowitz from her house for the first time in a year. Her husband’s attempts to get her to at least walk to the end of the street with him had resulted in tears of panic, and he’d finally stopped pressuring her to go out. But now she left her house as if she’d never retreated inside its walls and visited her friends to collect whatever they could spare. Trudi and Frau Weiler helped her to pack cartons with blankets and warm clothing, with food that would not spoil, with medicines from Frau Doktor Rosen, whose steps had slowed to a shuffle and whose hands trembled when she examined the few patients who still came to her.

  As soon as the packages had been mailed, Frau Abramowitz made lists of other items that were needed, involving her daughter, Ruth, the women in her neighborhood, and women from her synagogue. Ruth had begun to spend occasional nights at her parents’ house, and though Frau Abramowitz was always grateful to see her, it troubled her that her daughter avoided talking about her husband. In the beginning she’d asked why Fritz no longer visited them, and Ruth had said his throat practice had gotten so large that he hardly had time for himself. She didn’t tell her mother that quite a few of her husband’s patients were Nazi officials, who came to Fritz with the same concerns as his patients who were stage performers—to use their vocal cords to their fullest capacity without damaging them.

  Herr Blau, who would always wonder if the young man he’d turned away from his house had been on the transport to Poland with Frau Simon, kept contributing coats and warm jackets, which he sewed from bolts of leftover fabric. When he learned from Frau Simon’s next letter that fewer than half of the packages had arrived—only those with worn clothing—Herr Blau found ways to make new clothes look used: he removed occasional buttons and packed them inside balls of darned socks; he cut out labels and unraveled the edges of blankets; he crumpled fabrics instead of folding them between layers of paper. That shipment arrived almost in its entirety.

  By then, most of the Theresienheim had been appropriated for interrogations and detentions. While the sisters were confined to the cluster of cells adjacent to the chapel, most of the U-shaped building housed Jews and other “undesirables” while they waited to be transported or released. Many of them were old or ill. Usually four or five people were assigned to each small locked room.

  But not only the Jews were in danger. Rumors were coming through that the weak and deformed and retarded were at risk. “Eaters,” Anton Immers referred to them with contempt as though that had become their only function. He thought it only fitting that some were taken out of institutions and relocated to undisclosed places, while others were removed from their communities, like the man-who-touches-his-heart, who was arrested at the cemetery on All Saints’ Day while placing a wreath on the grave of his nephew, who’d been shot down over England the year before.

  In March of 1942 the parents of the Buttgereit boy received an urn, accompanied by a message that their nineteen-year-old son had died from an unnamed infection in the school outside Bonn where he’d lived for the past years. To avoid spreading the infection, the letter informed them, their son had been cremated immediately. The morning his ashes were placed into the chilly soil, his black-shrouded sisters encircled his open grave like obelisks. Two supported their father by his elbows. Their mother stood separate from them, her face rigid from stifling the silent scream: But not like this. Not like this. Ever since her son had fallen from the hay wagon as a small boy, damaging his spine, and Frau Doktor Rosen had predicted that he would not live beyond twenty, Frau Buttgereit had prepared herself for her son’s death, anticipating a gradual weakening of his crippled body, an even stronger curving of his poor spine that would eventually reinstate him to the curled shape that had awaited birth within her—when all was still well, oh God, when all was still possible—but what she had not foreseen was an infection that would rip him from her—body and mind—in one swift, cruel gesture, without the long-rehearsed words of their final parting. No. That she could not accept.

  Just one row away in the cemetery, Frau Weskopp waited for the priest to bless the coffin of her husband, whose body had been shipped back from Russia. He would lie next to her younger son, an SS officer, who’d become a war casualty only the month before, not long enough for the worms to finish their task of scouring the skeleton. The family grave still revealed the seam of that burial: its earth had not had time to heal in the weeks between the two deaths. It was a wide grave, wide enough to cradle the remains of her parents and youngest son, while leaving space for this new coffin, as well as for herself and her oldest son, who was still serving the Vaterland.

  When Trudi Montag and other parishioners followed the priest from the Buttgereits’ gravesite to where the widow Weskopp knelt in her black coat and black hat, they passed the grave of Herr Höffenauer, who’d been buried next to his mother after lightning had struck him at her grave. One squat candle burned inside a glass lantern that was set in front of the granite marker.

  Klaus Malter’s mother was released a week after the two funerals. Trudi found out from the widow Blomberg when she came into the pay-library to borrow a mystery novel.

  “I’m glad she’s free,” Trudi said. “Who told you?”

  “The young Frau Malter.”

  “Jutta—she would know.”

  “They won’t let the Frau Professor teach at the university anymore. I wonder what she’s going to do for money.”

  “She comes from wealth,” Trudi said. “I’m sure her family will help.”

  “You’d be surprised how many families drop away when you’re in trouble.”

  “Not your family, though.”

  “Not my sister, anyway. I’m glad she got away to Holland in time. But my brother—I don’t even know where he lives now.” She shivered, and Trudi made her sit down on one of the boxes of banned books that were stored along the wall next to the counter. “If he lives, that is.”

  Trudi watched her silently—the grayish face marked by sorrow and hunger, the painfully thin hands. It hurt her eyes to look at the yellow star that was sewn with meticulous stitches to the front of Frau Blomberg’s coat. No matter how many of those stars she saw, they hurt her eyes.
She felt the loss of all the people who had left Burgdorf, those who had fled or been taken, those who were still fighting this dreadful war.

  “I was thinking more of my husband’s family. I’m only half Jewish, and they used to pretend that didn’t count. But ever since my husband died, I’m no longer welcome there. Too dangerous, they said the last time I wanted to visit.”

  “You hear from Fienchen?”

  “This is the second year I haven’t been able to celebrate her birthday with her. She just turned fourteen.” Frau Blomberg pulled out a folded handkerchief and blew her nose.

  Trudi noticed a spot of blood, and her first thought was that Frau Blomberg must have spit a communion wafer into her handkerchief. Those old superstitions … She shook her head. Besides, Frau Blomberg wasn’t even Catholic.

  “I used to make plum cake for Fienchen on her birthdays, one sheet of cake for her, the other for my husband and me. Remember how she loved to eat hot plum cake, Trudi?”

  Trudi nodded, but what she remembered was Fienchen as a six-year-old, her face bloodied from stones the boys had thrown at her.

  “It’s better for her, being with my sister in Amsterdam. They’re after the Jews there too, but I don’t think it’s as bad as here.”

  The month after her husband had died from a burst appendix, Frau Blomberg and Fienchen had applied for visas to Holland, together with her sister’s family, whose professional skills—she a nurse and he an accountant—turned out to be far more desirable to the Dutch than those of a widow whose secretarial training had been broken off when, at sixteen, she’d become a housewife and mother.

  The night before their departure, Frau Blomberg’s sister had offered to smuggle Fienchen out of the country as one of her own children. She had six, four of them girls, and they all pretended to be asleep in a tangle of arms and legs when they crossed the border. It was one of the stories Trudi knew she could never tell. She’d even cautioned Frau Blomberg when she’d first heard about the escape from her.

  “I get so jealous of my sister, being a mother to Fienchen, watching her change,” Frau Blomberg was saying. “I only had the one.…”

  “You’ll always be her mother.” Trudi reached behind the counter and picked up two new mystery novels which hadn’t been covered with cellophane yet. “These came in yesterday,” she said. “How would you like to be the first one to read them?”

  Frau Blomberg picked up both books, her eyes skimming across the gaudy jackets and down the summary on the inside flap. “I was only going to borrow one.”

  “I’d love to know what you think of them, so I’d be glad to let you have both for the price of one. You see,” Trudi continued hurriedly as Frau Blomberg looked about to object, “usually my father likes to read books ahead of time, to recommend them to certain customers, you know, but he’s been preparing for a chess tournament. I’m sure he’d appreciate it if you could do this for him.”

  She stood in the open door, watching Frau Blomberg walk away with both books, when Max Rudnick drove up. Before she could retreat, he leapt from his car, pointing at the sky. “Look,” he shouted. “Look.”

  Above them, a huge formation of birds flew toward the river in one solid V-shape, but all at once its direction changed and—in that moment of change—became a dark cluster in the sky; yet, almost instantly, from that cluster the V-shape realigned itself as if imprinted on some ancient memory and headed toward the fairgrounds.

  “How much do I owe?”

  “For what?” She stared at Max Rudnick.

  “In fines.” He pulled the overdue book from the pocket of his raincoat.

  “By now it would cost less to replace it.” Trudi waved aside his offer to pay as he followed her inside. “Besides, you bought me that tea, remember?”

  “But that was my pleasure.” He said it with such sincerity that she wanted to bolt.

  Her father came in from the hallway and greeted Max Rudnick.

  “I have work to do.” She grasped four books from the counter and retreated to the back of the library even though they didn’t belong there. She heard his voice, then her father’s, but not loud enough to understand their words. A fine business I’m running here, she thought, two books for the price of one, no overdue fines.… If people hear about this, they’ll all want the same deals, and we may as well close up.

  When she finally came to the front again, Herr Rudnick was paying for a pouch of tobacco.

  He pushed his thumb against the bridge of his glasses. “How would you like to go for a walk with me?”

  “I—there’s too much I have to do here.” She felt her father’s eyes on her. He was watching her with an amused smile, and she resisted the temptation to make a face at him.

  Without trying to persuade her to go on that walk, Max Rudnick left, and he didn’t ask her again when he returned to buy tobacco the following week and the week after that. He no longer made an effort to draw her into talking with him, but instead spoke easily with her father.

  “I no longer know my own daughter,” Leo Montag said one afternoon after Max Rudnick had left.

  “Why?”

  “Because you don’t ask this man any questions. You’ve never let anyone leave here without asking your questions.”

  “I’m not interested in his life.”

  Her father smiled. “Now that is the one answer I didn’t figure on.”

  Her entire head felt hot. “What do you mean?”

  “Oh—I’m not sure myself.”

  “I wish he wouldn’t come in here.”

  “And why is that?”

  “I—He is pushy. Nosy.”

  “He regards you highly.”

  “He just pretends.” But she had to ask. “What makes you believe that?”

  “It comes through.”

  “How so?”

  “In the way he looks at you.”

  “You read too many of your trashy books.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Has he said anything?”

  “About what?”

  “Me, of course.”

  “He must have.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh—” Her father gave her a deliberately vague smile. “What I know about him is that he rents a room in Kaiserswerth and that he supports himself by giving private lessons.”

  “What else did you find out?”

  “And here you thought you had no interest in his life.…”

  • • •

  The next time Max Rudnick came to the pay-library, he followed Trudi between the stacks of shelves when she made her escape and watched her rearrange a shelf of war novels that didn’t need any rearranging.

  “Will you come for dinner with me on Sunday?”

  “No,” she said, angry at herself for feeling delighted at his invitation.

  He was leaning above her, one arm stretched against a support bracket. “Why not?”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Why would I even think I had to?”

  “Because …” She lined up the spines of the books by running one thumb along them. “Because you’re feeling sorry for me.”

  “Sorry for you? Why?”

  “You want me to say it aloud?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “All right then. Because I’m a Zwerg.”

  “What I see is a spirited young woman.”

  “Sure.”

  “A spirited and bright young woman who—”

  “Who is a Zwerg.”

  “Who is a Zwerg” he said quietly.

  It stung her, hearing the word from him. “See?” she demanded.

  He crouched, bringing his face to the same level with hers. “It bothers you, not me.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Give me a chance to convince you then.”

  She shook her head.

  “I’m asking you to have a meal with me—not to discuss the names of our grandchildren.”

  He grinned at her until she
was grinning back at him. If only that secret of Angelika didn’t exist between them.… Just eating dinner with him on Sunday wouldn’t do any damage. But as she imagined sitting across the table from him, she felt the urge to confess how sorry she was to have played such an ugly game with him.

  “I can’t,” she said abruptly, and when he nodded without trying to convince her, she felt she’d lost something she hadn’t even begun to value.

  After that discussion, she was sure Max Rudnick would buy his tobacco elsewhere, but he kept returning to the pay-library and talked with her father if she pretended to be busy, carrying stacks of books from one shelf unit to another. She thought of several other gentle ways to refuse his invitations, but he did not ask her again, not even when she began to join him and her father in their conversations.

  One afternoon he told her father why he’d left his teaching job in Köln. He’d had a clash with one of the other teachers, who’d walked past his house one late afternoon when he was building a chicken coop in back of the garden.

  “Can I take a look?” His colleague had studied the construction.

  “Come on in.”

  “What are you building?”

  Max Rudnick laid his hammer aside. “This will be a chicken coop. And that I build here is thanks to the Führer.”

  His colleague stared at him, horrified, and quickly walked away. Max Rudnick had intended his comment as a joke because it had become the custom that, wherever something was built, private or government, a sign would be attached to the building: Dass ich hier baue verdanke ich dem Führer—That I build here is thanks to the Führer.

  The following day, the teacher did not speak to him in the faculty lunchroom, but in the afternoon he returned, opened the gate to the garden without asking, and stood by the chicken coop, watching while Max Rudnick continued the construction.

  “Listen,” the teacher finally said, “because of you I had a sleepless night.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “You were ridiculing the Führer.” He stood with his hands clasped in front of his stomach as if waiting for Max Rudnick to correct him, but when Max didn’t speak up, he worked himself into a coughing fit. “I had to fight with myself,” he sputtered, “and I’m still fighting with myself if I should notify the police.… They—they should know about you.”