Almost Everything Very Fast

by Almost Everything Very Fast Christopher Kloeble

  “I didn’t know you could have more than one of those,” said Albert.

  “Only a couple.”

  “And the gold was in there?”

  “All Most Beloved Possessions come from there!”

  Albert set down his tote bag, knelt before the chest, and opened it. There was a sticker pasted to the inner surface of the lid: a cartoon bear wearing red-and-white pants, sailing with outspread arms over the legend Berlin-Tempelhof.

  On the floor of the chest, precisely in the middle, parallel to the side walls, lay a snow-white lily. Albert lifted it and sniffed. Bittersweet odor of compost. The blossom was barely wilted. It couldn’t have been in the chest for more than a few hours.

  “Why did you put it in there?”

  “It wasn’t me,” said Fred.

  Albert lifted an eyebrow.

  “It really wasn’t!”

  Albert smelled the lily again, though the odor made him uneasy, then passed it to Fred, who promptly buried his nose in the blossom. “What kind of flower is it?”

  Albert told him.

  “Then it’s for me. Lilies are specially for dead people.”

  Albert shut the chest and sat down on it. Fred stroked the lily’s petals with his finger as if the flower were the head of a parakeet. “When I go dead, you’ll have to come down here and open the chest. Because when I go dead, I won’t be able to open the chest anymore.”

  “Do me a favor and stop saying dead.”

  Fred took off his Tyrolean hat, stuck the lily into the band beside the tuft, and put it on again. “Am I chic?”

  “Extremely.”

  Fred’s grin was lily-white.

  “Frederick, I’d like you to tell me who put the flower in there.”

  “My papa.”

  “Have you spoken to him?”

  “No.” Fred’s head sank, then sprang up again. “But I wished for a dead person’s flower from my papa, and now there’s a dead person’s flower there!”

  Albert quietly repeated the words “Now there’s a dead person’s flower there,” which from Fred’s mouth sounded so plausible, so unquestionably true. From Albert’s they seemed so insubstantial—he felt stupid just having them in his head, let alone on his lips.

  “Okay then.” Albert rose to his feet, clapped his hands, and spoke loudly into the darkness, “I wish for an ice-cold lemonade!” He flung open the lid of the chest.

  Fred stared at him.

  “Oh. Didn’t work. Oh well. These things happen. Try again.” He flipped the lid closed with a bang.

  Fred winced.

  “Maybe that wish didn’t come from the heart,” said Albert, feeling his rage swell. “How about this: I wish for some sign … No, why be so modest when you’ve got a chest of wonders? … Dear spirit of the chest, I wish for my mother.” Lid up. “There you go. It’s obviously busy at the moment. Ah well. Good things come to those who …” He gave the chest a kick. “How about we ask for your papa, hmm? Or our family tree? Or a smaller heart for you?”

  Albert wasn’t bothering to check the chest anymore.

  “Are you angry?” asked Fred.

  “What makes you think that?”

  Fred opened the chest. “Albert! Look!” He reached in and pulled out the bear sticker.

  “A miracle,” said Albert. And then he saw that on the underside of the lid, at the spot the sticker had covered, four words were written: My Most Beloved Possession. Again, that ornate schoolgirl’s hand.

  Fred put the sticker in his backpack. “My papa likes giving me things.”

  “Have you ever seen him?”

  “No.” Fred leaned forward. “Have you ever seen him?”

  “No, Fred. No, I haven’t.”

  Before they began the trek homeward, Fred asked for refreshments. They sat back-to-back on the chest, sharing the bread they’d brought along, the peeled carrots, the bananas, and washed it all down with the apple spritzer. Fred ate with tremendous appetite, and though Albert was just as hungry, he held back so that Fred would have his fill.

  They’d barely been under way for five minutes when Albert’s thoughts started off again. It was his own fault: he couldn’t fool himself. Whenever he tried it, a second voice immediately piped up in his head, contradicting him; and when the argument of these voices ran into a cul-de-sac, a third voice intervened, summing things up; and that summation was then pronounced aloud in a fourth voice, Albert’s own. In this case it said, “Are you sure, Fred, that nobody but you knows about the chest?”

  Fred said, “No.”

  “I mean, apart from you and your papa.”

  “Besides my papa and me, only one person knows the chest is there.”

  “Who?”

  “You.”

  Albert’s fingers fidgeted, they yearned to be holding a cigarette. To calm them he shoved his hands into his pockets and gripped the makeup compact.

  Fred scratched at his nose. “You shouldn’t be sad because you don’t have a lily. Everyone will get a dead person’s flower eventually. Even you.”

  “You think so.”

  Emphatic nodding. “Definitely!”

  Albert let go of the mirror and set down the tote bag. He stood on his tiptoes, took the hat from Fred’s head, and looked again at the lily. He ran his thumb along the stem. It had been cut smoothly. With a knife. Or a pair of garden shears.

  A Surprise

  Though his heart had been more or less calm ever since they’d left the sewers, the moment Albert stepped onto the property of Fred’s neighbor and read the name beside the door—Klondi, written out in a lovely schoolgirlish script—it immediately lost its cool, and he had trouble concealing the fact from Fred, who was waiting behind him while, for the second time in two days, he stood with lifted finger at a front door, and hesitated before ringing the bell.

  “Albert?”

  “Yes?”

  “You have to ring.”

  The gentle summer air was certainly more pleasant to breathe than that oxygen paste in the sewers, but now that he was outside again, at approximately three in the afternoon, Albert felt exposed. Too much space to think. Clearly delineated boundaries, like those at a Catholic orphanage, for instance, were more his speed. Only, how could you build a wall inside your head? How did you keep yourself from thinking: Klondi. It can’t be Klondi. Can it be Klondi?

  Fred rang.

  “Thanks,” said Albert.

  “You’re welcome,” said Fred.

  “Over here,” called a husky female voice from the garden. Fred and Albert stepped around the house, whose balcony slanted down and to the right like a lopsided smile. Klondi was sitting on a little patch of turf by the frog pond. Five years had gone by since Albert had come to ask her about his mother. The years hadn’t changed her, except that she now wore her silver-gray hair down and at shoulder-length. As they approached she plucked one greenish noodle after another from the saucepan lying in her lap, stuck their ends into her mouth, and sucked them in through her lips.

  “Want a taste?” she asked. Albert declined. Fred dropped his eyes to the ground and flared his nostrils, semaphoring Yes. Klondi passed him a handful of noodles, which dangled from her fist like earthworms, and, taking them, he imitated her suction technique.

  “It’s just like Lady and the Tramp, without dogs,” he said.

  “I plucked the wild garlic myself. Sure you won’t partake?” asked Klondi, and offered the pot to Albert, who could feel his hunger waxing.

  “No appetite.”

  Fred and Klondi went on slurping happily. Which Albert endured for another minute and a half. Then he said, “We’ve found a Hansel and Gretel crumb,” and Klondi stopped eating and looked at him. Albert pointed to the lily in Fred’s Tyrolean hat.

  “This isn’t the right time,” she said.

  Albert was glad she wasn’t trying to lie. “I don’t think there is a right time for this.”

  “But there’s a better one,” she said through gritted teeth, from which green shre
ds of wild garlic hung, and nodded at Fred, who was fishing in the frog pond with a long noodle.

  “Can you wait here for a minute, Fred?” said Albert. “Klondi wants to show me something in the house.”

  Fred dropped his noodle into the pond. “She should show me, too!”

  Klondi laid her hand on Fred’s back. “I could do that. But then it wouldn’t be a surprise anymore.”

  “A surprise for me?”

  “Among others,” said Klondi.

  Fred opened his backpack and retrieved the encyclopedia, then rolled onto his belly, and started reading at page one. Albert wanted to say something nice to him, but all that came to mind was “We won’t be long.”

  No Harry Potter

  The chill inside Klondi’s house, which had succeeded in holding fast against the surrounding summer, made Albert wish he had, in fact, accepted some of the spaghetti. A little inner warmth against the shivers. He followed Klondi into the kitchen, a replica of one of those cozy Alpine rooms you find pictured in German furniture-store brochures. A little seating area with wooden chairs whose backrests had heart-shaped holes sawed into them, white-and-blue-checked clay beer steins on the windowsill, a tiled stove, and a low ceiling supported by old, petrified beams, which even Albert, in spite of his undistinguished size, had to duck his head to clear.

  “Cigarette?”

  Klondi extended a packet of Gauloises, just as she had five years before.

  “I don’t smoke,” he said coolly.

  “Fibber. Want one or not?”

  Klondi plucked two cigarettes from the pack, lit them both, stuck one between Albert’s lips, and drew deeply on the other, as if it were providing her with air. “God, finally! Were you the one who told Fred about lung cancer and smoker’s leg?”

  Silently Albert shook his head; as always, Klondi had an overwhelming effect on him: in her presence he felt so young and inexperienced.

  “Anyway, you can’t smoke anywhere near him without him going completely nuts.” Her cigarette bobbed up and down as she spoke. “I always have to find some excuse for the smell.”

  “What color was your hair when you were younger?”

  “At least sit down first.”

  “No thanks.” Albert ground his cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray. “Look, are you my mother, or what?”

  From somewhere in the depths of the house came a creak, eerily extended, like the parody of an opening door in a horror movie—though to Albert it also sounded a bit like indigestion—and as silence fell again, Klondi said, “Ah, well.”

  Albert wasn’t surprised. Hundreds of times, thousands of times, he’d imagined this moment, fearing he might faint, hoping he’d be able to react without reproach, wondering whether they’d embrace, or smile, or weep, or all three at once, expecting to feel in every fiber of his body, and perhaps even beyond it, relief, confidence, joy.

  But there was nothing.

  He sat down on one of the chairs and looked at Klondi, who just stood there, tapping ash from her cigarette and letting it fall to the floor like snow.

  “I expected the thought would occur to you someday.” She turned one of the chairs back to front and straddled it, shaking her head. “But my hair used to be blond, not dark blond, not platinum blond, and definitely not strawberry blond. Sorry.”

  Albert glanced through the four-paned window. Outside, Fred lay stretched flat on his belly, his head resting on the encyclopedia, like somebody who’d been shot from behind.

  “What were you looking for in the sewers?” Klondi asked.

  “The truth.”

  “But let’s be honest here, do you actually want to find it? Or just your own version of it?”

  “There’s only ever one truth. That’s what makes it truth.”

  “I’ve heard,” said Klondi, without responding to his commentary, “that Dickens and Rowling are both strangely beloved by orphans.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Those kinds of stories can arouse false expectations,” she said, poking around in the ashtray with her fingers. “Who, after all, turns out to be a Harry Potter or an Oliver Twist? Who actually discovers something special about themselves, or develops some magical power? Most orphans aren’t princes or students of magic; they’re just kids who’ve gotten less love than the rest.”

  Of course Albert knew that, and yet it hurt to have it said so baldly, right to his face. What was Klondi up to? He asked himself whether it wasn’t time to go.

  Klondi ground out her cigarette. “Maybe I can tell you who your mother is.”

  Albert coughed.

  “I said maybe.” She smiled at him sympathetically. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up.”

  “Don’t bother yourself too much about me,” he said as calmly as possible, avoiding her eyes. When somebody asked him not to get his hopes up, he could do nothing but get his hopes up.

  A husky laugh. “You’d be a miserable poker player.” She bent forward, so that her chair stood shakily on two legs, grabbed his head with both hands, and pressed a kiss onto the cheek with the cops-and-robbers scar. “But not such a bad son.”

  Albert pushed her back onto all four chair legs, and she let rip with her truth. The sunshine falling through the window lacked warmth, and there wasn’t much to spare in Albert, either. His body felt stiff, he shivered, but he was too exhausted to do anything about it. So he listened.

  Klondi’s Story

  It all began with Klondi bringing a little girl into the world in 1971. She’d been pleased about the prospect, actually—she could hardly wait to hold the child in her arms. Just before the delivery she’d switched hospitals because, as she’d discovered very late, in the clinic where it was supposed to happen, all the babies were washed after birth, before being passed to their parents, and Klondi wanted no part of that, she wanted to hold her daughter in her arms while the baby was slick and bloody—in for a penny, in for a pound—and so she and her husband, Ludwig, hailed another taxi and shouted to the driver, “Next hospital!” And he answered, “But there’s one right here!” And they tossed all the cash they had onto the passenger seat. And the driver put his car into gear.

  And so, at that next hospital, Klondi gave birth to a girl, her name was Marina because Ludwig had wanted it that way, Marina, it sounded almost like Mina, which had been Ludwig’s mother’s name. Marina fidgeted and squalled just like Klondi had imagined she would, and Klondi smiled, because she felt like she’d made up for the two abortions she’d had earlier in her life, or at least one of them, and she pressed Marina to her breast and cupped a hand over her head like a helmet, and sniffed her. They say that babies don’t smell, but this baby, Klondi’s baby, did smell—though not good, somehow. That’s what she got for absolutely having to hold her daughter in her arms right away, thought Klondi, nobody had told her about the smell, they all talked about the miracle of having a living being slide out of you, the miracle of creating—with a little masculine help—a brand-new life, but nobody warned you how badly said life could stink. Klondi didn’t want to do any violence to her nose, her body had already been through enough, and she passed Marina to the nurse, so that she could get started with the washing. “Make sure she’s really clean,” Klondi said, and added, because the nurse had shot her a confused look, “Give her a mirror finish!” and when she was alone, she gave her hands a sniff and made a face. Klondi slept for a few hours, waking just when she started to dream she was going into labor. Marina was brought back to her, this time spotlessly clean, wrapped in white blankets, what a sight, and Klondi took her, full of joy, she wanted to hold her daughter, this creature who had never been separated from her for so long, she raised the little bundle to her face, wanting to kiss it, and pursed her lips and pushed her head forward, and just couldn’t do it. That simply didn’t smell good. Maybe it had something to do with hormones, maybe it was an allergic reaction, the doctor couldn’t explain it. Marina smelled fantastic, he assured her, and Ludwig secon
ded him, and Klondi didn’t like that at all, they were making it sound as if it were her fault, yet her nose was just fine, as later investigations confirmed. Possibly it was the hospital’s fault, the doctor interjected, whereupon Klondi decided to go home immediately.

  Half an hour later Ludwig was steering their car toward the house in Königsdorf, and Marina lay in a little basket on the backseat beside Klondi, who wasn’t sad or frightened in the least, only confused, because she couldn’t say where her happiness had gone. For nine months she’d waited, for nine months she’d restrained herself, hadn’t gone out dancing until dawn or gotten drunk, hadn’t gone swimming in the frigid Isar or smoked any grass, had followed through with the whole maternity program, heavy breathing and listening to music and letting them run tests on her and the whole nine yards, everything that was meant to do you good, in order to stay the course at least once in her life, and now she wanted her reward, she wanted the happiness.

  The car pulled to a stop in front of their semidetached house, for which they’d recently made the down payment, in Osterhofen, a neighborhood of Königsdorf that borders the moor, and Klondi got out and carried Marina in her little basket through the garden, taking no notice of the pink banner above the front door that read CONGRATULATIONS!!!, waited for Ludwig to let her in, then brought Marina into her room with its green walls. There Klondi unwrapped Marina, tossed the basket and everything else that had been in contact with her out onto the porch, and washed Marina again with her own hands. Maybe they hadn’t done it thoroughly in the hospital. Gently she ran the sponge across Marina’s skin and through every fold, speaking to her, explaining to the little whiner that she was sorry, it had to be like this, but not to worry, it would all be over soon. Then she dried Marina off and wrapped her up in towels that had been washed with their own usual detergent, line-dried in their garden, stored in their linen closet, and she carried Marina into the living room, where Ludwig was waiting, the sweetheart, though at the moment she couldn’t spare a thought for him, he could look as confused as he liked, there were other things to worry about, and she sat down on her chair in the solarium, which she’d arranged there because during her pregnancy she’d thought how nice it would be to sit in this chair with its view of the garden and a couple of houses and the expanse of moor, and suckle her daughter, and Klondi opened her blouse and lifted her breast from the bra and smelled Marina and clutched her breasts and smelled her again and stood up and passed her daughter to her husband.