Stones From the River

by Ursula Hegi

  But in the morning she awoke tingling with anticipation. Only eleven hours until she would see him. Was he thinking of her that moment? She felt silly, afraid, happy. Her energy was boundless as she worked in the library. She pictured herself sitting across from Max at the table, saw him bending over her in her bedroom, and she surfaced to her customers’ questions in a daze. Although she couldn’t wait for it to be six o’clock, she wanted to prolong this sweet suspense that tinged her day and made her feel graceful on her feet, even somewhat taller, as though, miraculously, her body had finally obeyed her old prayers.

  The first time Max Rudnick kissed her, Trudi felt the secret of Angelika between them, but she kissed him back, passionately, greedily because she felt she was stealing this kiss. Once he knew the truth about the letters, he would no longer want to see her, much less kiss her. And yet, she found herself smiling through that kiss because it occurred to her that it had been just about a decade since Klaus Malter had kissed her and because she promised herself that it would not be another decade before she’d kiss another man.

  The second time Max Rudnick kissed her was right after the first kiss, and then there were several other kisses that would make her mouth feel fuller, delicately swollen. She became accustomed to his melodic voice, though she couldn’t always make out what he said right away, but his hands would follow the swift words as if to preserve them in his palms until, all at once, she’d understand what he’d said. And even if she didn’t—Max Rudnick was a patient man who didn’t mind repeating his words.

  When he held her in his arms, it felt as though he’d never been away, though he told her he’d been back in Köln to nurse his Russian grandmother through her last months of illness and to settle her estate. There hadn’t been much, but she’d left everything to him. It helped since the industrialist and his family had fled to Switzerland, and he had only found two new students to tutor.

  He listened with compassion when she told him about her arrest. Before long, she began to find the ordinary in him beautiful: the curved shoulders now looked willowy, and the wave of black hair on his collar was not too long but rather followed the fine contour of his ears. She could not imagine why she would have thought of his mustache as timid when, in reality, its many hues of silken, bleached hairs only brought out the sensitive line of his upper lip. And as her love transformed what she saw—gradually, so that each encounter became a new discovery—she wondered if it was like that for him, too. Perhaps he only noticed her mass of silver-blond hair. Perhaps his eyesight was so bad that he barely saw her at all. She knew he liked the sound of her voice—he’d told her that—and she was certain he enjoyed their conversations. Ever since he’d said that she had spirited eyes, she’d found herself studying them in the mirror as though they belonged to another woman.

  She didn’t want to believe that he was only drawn to her because she was different, but their first disagreement was about just that. They were standing beneath the marquee of a movie theater in Düsseldorf, waiting for the cold rain to let up so they could run for his car. The film they’d seen had been romantic kitsch, a love story set in alpine meadows, complete with yodeling, Lederhosen, blond braids, and St. Bernards that carried casks of Schnaps around their furry necks and rescued blond heroes trapped on glaciers.

  Peering into the rain, Max told her he admired her strength, her difference.

  “Inside I’m just like others,” she said.

  “How can you possibly be like anyone else inside?”

  “Why not?” she snapped back.

  “Because your life has shaped you, has made you unique.”

  “Just because I’m different on the outside—”

  “But that’s not what I’m talking about.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “What I’m saying is the opposite, really. Each one of us is different. Even those who are alike on the outside are totally unique on the inside.” The dark street was deserted. “You take two old men, let’s say, brothers, same height, same color hair—or no hair—who’ve lived in the same town all their lives.… As far as I’m concerned, they’re not at all alike.”

  “Yes, but the two of them will look at me and use their sameness as a barrier to separate themselves from me. They’ll believe I don’t have anything in common with them.”

  “Then they’re stupid old men.”

  “And there are thousands like them, men and women, who assume that with me everything is smaller—what I feel, what I think.…”

  He brought his hand around the back of her head and bent down. In the light above the door of the theater, his glasses were fogged.

  “You don’t have to do this,” she said as he kissed her, but then she saw the sadness and earth in his eyes, far too deep to be concerned about surfaces, and understood he wanted her as she was.

  And yet, when he took her by the hand and ran with her across the wet pavement to the narrow hotel across the street, when he booked a room for them and dried her hair with a towel as soon as they got inside, she was terrified to take off her clothes and have him look at her with the same loathing she’d seen in her own eyes that day she’d run from Klaus Malter’s office and her mirrors had thrown back her disjointed reflection, pale flesh swelling from the golden frames.

  But Max was kissing her, gazing at her with affection. It was cold in the room. Rain drummed on the tile roof, against the window, and she closed her eyes, ready to let happen whatever would happen, because to dread it, to wait for it, was worse. Then his hands were on her breasts, and she got confused for a moment, thinking they belonged to Klaus Malter because they’d been his in those old fantasies, and she quickly opened her eyes and kept them open, reminding herself: this is Max, this is Max—And when he cried out under his rapid breath and ceased moving, poised above her like a comet the instant before its bright descent, she felt left behind. Her body felt warm and pliant, almost wonderful, but she was not moved by the tremors that she’d evoked for herself so many times.

  He sighed, kissed her nose, her forehead, her left ear, settled against her side, one arm warm beneath her head, knees curved against her ankles. As she turned toward the length of his body, he murmured something. His arm twitched.

  “Why me?” she whispered.

  But he was already asleep.

  She’d never slept in the same bed with anyone. It felt strange, crowded, exciting—as though her body had sprouted an extra torso and head, limbs of normal size that would disentangle from her in a few hours. But not yet. Not yet. It made her think how children who had siblings often slept in the same bed. She wondered if her parents would have had other children if she hadn’t been a Zwerg. Just before she fell asleep, she remembered asking Frau Blau if her mother would have stayed sane if she hadn’t given birth to a Zwerg child, and how important it had been to her what Frau Blau had told her: “Your mother was odd long before you were born. Don’t misunderstand me, Trudi, I liked her. She was a dear, dear woman. But whatever was troubling her was there since she was a girl.”

  When Trudi did reach those tremors the next time she lay with Max Rudnick, she felt horrified because she’d used him to slip back to the barn and the boys and the old terror that brought her, brought her—

  “Why are you crying?” he asked, stroking her hair.

  She couldn’t answer.

  “Nothing you can say will be worse than this silence.”

  She shook her head.

  “Did I hurt you?”

  “Oh no,” she said, ashamed of the fantasies that had claimed her, ashamed of the passion that needed fear. She’d often felt hollow afterwards, but now it was even worse because she was betraying Max.

  He folded himself around her, rocked her.

  It amazed her how, after such a short time together, his body could feel so familiar to her. She liked being with him in the room that he rented above a clock shop in Kaiserswerth, even though it was chilly as if the walls stored the winter’s unrelenting cold. And what made it seem even
colder was that the room was nearly empty: except for his bed, it held no soft surfaces, only the angles of two chairs and a table, a bookshelf and a wardrobe, a sink and a stove. Max had very few belongings, as though he were prepared to leave quickly, and the one surprise in these stark surroundings was his unframed watercolors, which he’d pinned to the walls, all of them of fabulous buildings that looked like exotic flowers as they swirled and opened toward the sky.

  A few times she’d come close to letting her father know that something beautiful was happening between her and Max. Though he’d be asleep when she’d come home at dawn and wouldn’t ask her where she’d been, she had a feeling he understood about them and was glad for her. But already so much had gone on between her and Max that to say anything to her father now would involve confessing about not telling him from the beginning.

  Her instinctive secrecy when it came to herself made Trudi keep silent about Max to everyone else. They’d only shun him for choosing her, just as they’d shunned Eva after the concert. Besides, loving without marriage was sin. Though enough people did it, you couldn’t admit it because then the town had to reject you.

  “Some day,” Max said, “if you feel ready to tell me, will you let me know why you cried? Even if I don’t know the words to ask?”

  She held his hand, lifted it to look at it closely. It wasn’t just his hand that was tanned. His entire body was that soft brown shade. It would be so easy to forget all restraint and hurl her love at him the way Seehund used to with his puppy weight, his entire body and heart.

  “Will you?” he asked.

  “I like seeing your skin against mine.…”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because I always know where I end and where you begin. Look.”

  He reached behind himself for his glasses, and as he raised himself on his elbows, he, too, became intrigued by the contrast in their skin tones. “It’s beautiful, the way your skin glows … as if lit from inside by a thousand candles.”

  Already she could see herself alone at home, looking at herself in her mother’s mirrors, finding the glow he was talking about as a thousand candles warmed her from within. She was amazed at the sense of comfort she felt at being within her body—being whole, healthy, beautiful. Like Pia, she thought. Pia must have felt like that.

  “My light spirit,” Max murmured against her lips.

  “My light spirit,” she would murmur to herself in her bed at home, her smile turned into her pillow.

  seventeen

  1943

  “DO YOU HAVE ANY FAULTS, MAX?” SHE ASKED HIM ONE FEBRUARY night when she lay next to him in his narrow bed.

  “What do you mean?” He ran one hand along the inside of her arm, lightly.

  “You are too perfect, too kind.… It scares me. Makes me think I don’t see you right.”

  “Well… If you promise not to tell—” He glanced around his room as if to make sure no one else would overhear his confession. Bringing his lips against Trudi’s ear, he whispered, “I’ve stolen.”

  “What?”

  “A pack of chocolate cigarettes. When I was eight.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “You should be.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Sometimes I get furious, break things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh—toys, when I was a child. Once, I ripped my best friend’s kite apart when he made fun of the one I’d built.… I broke a car window a few years ago.”

  “What happened?”

  He hesitated.

  “Tell me? Please?”

  “I was traveling with—with a woman to Bremen. We were taking turns driving, and when I got out to walk around the car, you know, to the passenger side, she locked my door. We’d been joking around, and I guess she thought it was funny. She was sitting in there, laughing, and I warned her, I yelled, Open the door,’ but she dangled the key behind the windshield, and I picked up a rock. At first she laughed, but as I raised the rock, her expression changed, and I could see she was afraid. Afraid to let me in. But I couldn’t stop. Even though I knew something had gone too far and that I’d missed the moment when that had happened.”

  “Did you hurt her?”

  “No. I broke the window on the passenger side.”

  “Did you see her again after that?”

  “We—we were married.”

  Trudi sat up, pulled her arms close to herself, so that no part of her touched him any longer. On the floor by his wardrobe stood her black shoes, the ones with the highest heels, which she kept in his room so she could reach the table and sink easily.

  “Look at me,” he said. “I haven’t seen her in years.”

  “You’re divorced then?”

  “Not legally. But I will be, if we ever agree enough to sign papers.”

  Her body felt stiff as if her heart had stopped beating.

  “Come here.” He opened his arms to her. “Please, Trudi?”

  She shook her head. One of his hairs lay on her arm, dark and curled. She couldn’t bear to touch it and blew it away.

  “Ask whatever you need to know.”

  “You wouldn’t have told me.…”

  “I promise you the truth.”

  “You wouldn’t have told me.…”

  “I don’t think of her, Trudi. I don’t think of myself as married.”

  “But you are.”

  “People don’t always tell each other everything right away.”

  Her face felt hot. “What do you mean?”

  “Wouldn’t you agree that it’s better to wait to reveal some things until you know the other person is ready to hear them?”

  “I—I’m not sure.”

  “Well, you wanted to know if I had faults.”

  “And you do.”

  “You said I was too perfect.”

  “I would have settled for something less dramatic than a wife.”

  The following day Ingrid Baum traveled to Burgdorf in the back of an open truck that had been used for transporting potatoes. The bed of the truck was covered with potato dirt, thick layers of gray dust that clung to her skin. With her were a shoemaker from Bonn and his large family on their way to an uncle’s wedding in Oberhausen; they sang and laughed and fed her cake and insisted she share the bottle of Schnaps they passed around even to the children. Though Ingrid didn’t like Schnaps, she took one sip, afraid to offend the shoemaker’s wife who’d lean into her, whispering confidences about her husband’s appetites and the thickening of her monthly flow.

  As it began to rain, the family huddled closer, collecting around Ingrid as if she were one of them. The only part of her that was not freezing was her left ear: it burned into her skull, made half of her face sore. She tried to remember when it had started hurting, but she couldn’t even remember packing the suitcase, which was getting soft from the rain. When its handle came off, she turned it between her fingers. The oldest son passed the Schnaps to her again, telling her it would warm her, but she shook her head. The potato dust soaked up the water until they all were sitting in thick mud. When the truck dropped her off in front of the pay-library, her hands and face were smudged, her clothes soggy.

  Trudi, who’d been standing by the window, staring out into the rain while going over every word of last night’s conversation with Max, didn’t recognize the truck or the woman who stayed behind on the sidewalk when the truck drove off, holding a suitcase with both arms as though it were a sleeping child. But then the woman turned and became Ingrid. Trudi ran out, pulled her inside, made her take off her coat and wet shoes. After wrapping her in a blanket, she offered her soup and a bath though Ingrid was too exhausted to wash or eat.

  “What happened to you?” Trudi asked after she’d heated the stove and settled Ingrid next to it in a deep chair, feet raised on a wooden stool.

  Ingrid’s eyes went blank. She reached up, pulled a strand of straight wet hair into her thin face.

  “Why did you leave?”

  “I…
don’t know.”

  But gradually Trudi was able to draw from her that she remembered running with her suitcase from the KLV school, where she’d taught for the past year and half. She remembered getting off a train, but she didn’t recall the journey, not even buying a ticket. The truck? She’d been standing somewhere in the cold when the shoemaker had stopped for her.

  “There is a man who wants to marry me,” Ingrid said without enthusiasm.

  “Who is he?”

  “Ulrich.”

  “And…?”

  Ingrid leaned her head against the back of the chair and stared toward the ceiling. “… so well behaved.”

  “The man who wants to marry you?”

  “No, no. One of the students, Suse.” Ingrid’s voice tapered to a murmur as though she were talking to herself. “… a face like an angel—But Fräulein Wiedesprunt kept taking her on drives, bringing her licorice, letting her sleep in her room.… I didn’t know what to say to stop it. The girl—Maybe nothing happened.… Trudi?” She sat up straight. “Trudi.”

  “I’m here.”

  “I thought dirty about them.… The ink keeps running. Notebooks for school, they’re always rationing them and—”

  “Is that why you left there? Because of the girl?”

  “The paper, it’s so bad the ink runs.…” Ingrid’s voice took on an official quality as though she were imitating someone: “We have to verify the necessity of each purchase.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about this man who wants to marry you?”

  “Ulrich Hebel.”

  “What’s he like?”