Almost Everything Very Fast

by Almost Everything Very Fast Christopher Kloeble

  “You’re alive!” Anni threw her arms around me, tearing me from my thoughts. Else’s scent rose into my nostrils, and Anni’s warmth to my head, and both at once were almost too much.

  “You’re alive!” Anni repeated.

  “Not for long, if you keep squeezing that hard.”

  Anni let go of me and looked into my eyes and said almost voicelessly, “You’re alive.”

  I handed her the bundle. “For your wedding.”

  She smiled at me, moved, and tore it open.

  “Do you like it?”

  “… yes.”

  “Are you going to wear it?”

  “Julius, I already have a dress.”

  “It can’t be as beautiful as this one.”

  “I believe it is.”

  “What you decide to believe is always the truth.”

  “Then I believe that my dress is more beautiful.”

  “At least try it on.”

  “No can do.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because … it … it stinks.”

  “It has a bit of an odor!”

  “Julius. It stinks. And I don’t want to quarrel with you over a dress right now. You’re here! You’re alive!” Once again she clung to my throat, and she kissed my cheek and gave back Else’s dress. “Today is truly the most beautiful day of my life,” she whispered in my ear, and I kept to myself that I hoped life wouldn’t go downhill for her from here.

  “Is that Julius?” someone asked, in an accent I’d never heard before. A lanky man appeared beside Anni, slipped an arm around her waist, and offered me his hand. “I am Arkadiusz. It is a pleasure to meet you. Anni has told me about you so often. You must be a terribly special person.”

  I gave him a firm shake. That’s right, I thought, and: so much friendliness can’t possibly be genuine.

  “You will stay with us, of course,” said Arkadiusz.

  I knew I should have refused, and let the two of them insist, and then act as if I were pondering the situation, and let the two of them insist even more, and then manifest a little interest with some polite formulation, à la “If it really isn’t too much of a bother for you …” and then, hewing to the rule of third-time’s-a-charm, allow them to insist once more, in order to give in at last with an ironic “Well, if that’s the way it has to be.”

  Instead of which I flashed my teeth in a Segendorfish smile, and said, “Gladly.”

  Now my future brother-in-law threw an arm around me, too. “Welcome!”

  That was too much of a good thing for my taste. I asked Anni if I could speak to her alone, and she turned to Arkadiusz and looked at him imploringly. He nodded immediately. And though that was just what I’d wanted, I would’ve preferred him to be a little less understanding. This man seemed flawless.

  A little later, Anni and I were racing the way we used to, up to the top of Wolf Hill. I let her win. We stretched ourselves out in the shadow of the oak, and she told me about how she’d met Arkadiusz. Over the next few weeks we’d go back there again and again to talk about the past six years.

  “You actually want to do it,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Get married.”

  Her amused laugh robbed me of any hope that I might be able to foster some doubt in her. She could have left it at that, but she took my hand and said, “Arkadiusz is the most beautiful, the best man there is. I’ve never loved anyone the way I love him.”

  When Anni went off to finalize the preparations for the wedding, I went looking for distractions. I needed distractions. Right away. Unfortunately, the innkeeper was no longer an option. Still, I had an idea of where I might go.

  Mina turned out to be sensational. A multiple widow couldn’t have acquitted herself better. Out in the barn, we helped each other explode. The whole time, Mina wore the wedding dress. I’d made her a present of it. Over her tanned skin, the fragile white seemed somehow darker, nearly gray, and suited Mina’s hair—which had become more gray than blond by now—perfectly.

  “When are we getting married?” she asked, rolling herself on top of me and thereby ending our pause for breath.

  “My sister’s first,” I said.

  “But I already have a dress! We have to get married, too!”

  “We will.”

  “Did you come back to Segendorf because you wanted to marry me?”

  “Why else would I come back? You have to look after that dress. So that I can lead you to the altar in it.”

  “I’ll look after it perfectly!”

  “You promise?”

  “I promise,” she said—and exploded once again.

  Mina took her promises very seriously. While all the women in Segendorf were dolling themselves up for Anni and Arkadiusz’s wedding—pinking their cheeks with drops of blood, gracing their high-piled hair with wild-flowers—she folded her wedding dress up and laid it away in a box, in the safest place in the world: under her bed. She didn’t let even a fleck of dust anywhere near it. Every morning after getting up, and again before her evening prayers, she wiped the lid clean with care. As the Sacrificial Festival approached, she told the dress, “From now on, you’re no longer my Most Beloved Possession.” And once the Sacrificial Festival was over: “From now on, you’re once again my Most Beloved Possession.” Sometimes, long after I’d moved in with Anni and Arkadiusz, she brought me the box, and lifted the lid to remind me of its brightness, and whenever she did I’d smile and lie, telling her how much I was looking forward to our wedding, I could barely wait, but she had to be patient just a little while longer. And Mina was patient. Simple enough, since she was up to her ears in work, helping her mother at the bakery (at seven seconds, she held the Segendorf record for pretzel preparation). But in the evenings, when she’d run through her daily ration of patience and had nothing to think about but her intended, the handsome Julius Habom, all she wanted was to be able to fall asleep, to recharge herself, and the more she wanted to fall asleep, the wider awake she felt. Then she had no alternative but to pull on the wedding dress. She slipped out into the Segendorf night, looking for all the world like the ghost of a bride. She stood before our house, not approaching the door, but rather moving from window to window until she’d found me and waved to me, and distracted me from watching Anni, who for her part had eyes only for Arkadiusz; she danced with him, tickled him with the ends of her hair, fed him raspberry marmalade, kissed him, sat on his lap, rubbed his neck, read to him from the Bible, held his hand. As though I weren’t even there.

  On one of those nights when Mina was once again circling the house, she noticed a shape crouching by the kitchen window. Pig Farmer Markus. In his eyes, she told me—and it disturbed me to hear this—she recognized the same look with which I observed Anni. His right hand gripped a hunting knife. Mina hid herself behind a wheelbarrow. Markus raised his arm—as he did, a bit of his hair shifted oddly—and scratched something into the kitchen window. When he was done, he looked at the result with satisfaction. Then he slipped away. Mina glided over to the window and examined it. Markus had left a pair of similar-looking signs behind, of which the first came together at its tip; and though Mina couldn’t read, she felt that these were more than just a couple of scratches.

  “It’s just a couple of scratches,” I said to her when we met in the barn the next evening and Mina told me about what she’d seen. “What are you doing at our house at night, anyway?”

  “I don’t have much patience.”

  “You can’t just lurk around after dark. What will people think?”

  “I don’t know what people think.”

  “That’s not quite what I meant.”

  “Julius, when will we get married?”

  “We’ll be married soon,” I said, and plunged swiftly beneath the skirt of her dress. “Very soon.”

  A Human Anchor

  Very soon was still several months away, months in which the bridal gown began to stretch across her hips, and then wouldn’t slip over her b
elly any longer, so that she brought it along to our meetings in the barn only to cover the two of us with it. One night, while Mina slept, I laid a hand on the spot just above her bulging belly button, and whispered:

  “Can you hear me? Do you recognize my voice? Do you like it? It must sound completely different from in there.

  “Sometimes I wish I could crawl in there with you.

  “You should take your time. You’ll never again be as safe as you are right now. There aren’t any safe places out here. That’s why people say they feel safe—because they can never be safe. Maybe a little creature like you doesn’t feel anything yet. But you are safe.

  “Do you know that your aunt’s belly is getting bigger, too? It frightens me. Anni isn’t ready, not yet. Ever since I came back, I’ve been thinking about the fire. I’m not angry with her. She didn’t know what she was doing. But … but she doesn’t know what she did, either. Her memory is wrong. It wasn’t an accident—it certainly wasn’t a stray spark.

  “Should I tell her the truth? Should I tell her how I found her with the torch in front of our burning house? Can you even tell someone something like that? And if so, how?

  “Sometimes I wish I could crawl in there with you.”

  I made Mina promise me something else: to keep the name of her child’s father a secret. Having no father, I thought, would still be better than having me as a father, an undertaker who loved nobody but his sister; who couldn’t bring himself to tell her the truth about her past; who lived in her house and stuffed wax into his ears every night, because he was afraid he might overhear her and her Pole, and that would remind him of Jasfe and Josfer; who slaved away at the Segendorf cemetery, digging more graves than anyone needed, just to let off steam; who slept for the same reason with a Klöble who adored him and was convinced that any day now he’d make her a proposal of marriage; who, whenever he started awake from dreams of the house in flames, always immediately touched his elbow.

  You could say that only my ears experienced the birth of my son. Mina’s piercing shrieks kept all the customers far away from the bakery. In my room at Anni’s house, which stood close by, I paced back and forth, pausing only when Mina’s screams went silent and were replaced by those of our child. As night fell I crept to Mina’s window: she opened it, grinning, and passed me the little boy. I asked Mina if I could take a little stroll with my son, at which she smiled and nodded eagerly, as if I’d finally proposed to her. I walked with my son counterclockwise around the bakery.

  “You’re right on time. Someday you’ll grow into a very punctual man. Unlike your cousin. No surprise there. Poles aren’t known for their punctuality. Your aunt can’t leave the house anymore. She just lies there waiting, breaking the world record for head-shaking. Your uncle has to wash her and rub her impressive belly, while muttering words that sound as if they’re being said backward.

  “You’re so warm. The better to soften me, you’re probably thinking. I’ll tell you something: you wouldn’t be the first to try. It’s nothing personal, I just don’t have much use for children. The only thing I really like about you is your discretion. You’re an even better listener than the dead. A while back I was walking around a house with a woman who couldn’t speak either. I miss her, sometimes. Else’s image is clear in my mind. My parents, though—I can’t even remember their faces. Whenever I try to picture them, everything goes fuzzy. Anni says it’s the same for her. That’s why I’ve decided against telling her about the fire. Why should I remind her of the deaths of two people whom we can barely remember?

  “That’s certainly no reason for crying!

  “I’m going to tell your mother she should name you Ludwig. After our last king. What do you think? You’re going to need that kind of name. With a mother like her. And a father like me.”

  Frederick Arkadiusz Driajes followed Ludwig Reindl into the world after a lag of five days. During the birth Anni gripped my hand with her right, and Arkadiusz’s with her left—both of our faces were at least as painfully contorted as hers. Our worried creases smoothed only at the midwife’s satisfied nod, and Fred’s introductory scream was met with applause—which had nothing to do with him, but rather with the fact that at the same moment, not far away, the first cobblestone for the town’s new main street had just been solemnly lowered into place.

  Eight months later, by the time Ludwig mastered crawling (and Fred his own mode of locomotion, a sort of lateral roll), the cobbles already spanned the village from north to south, running right through the middle, as Mina put it, like a river of stones. Only two years after that, the main street, which Ludwig was allowed to cross (and Fred not at all) only after looking carefully left and right, had been extended even farther south, forming part of Reichsstrasse 11 toward Innsbruck. And in the spring of 1938, while its constant through-traffic and the rattling of one-cylinder engines brought happiness to Ludwig (and bad dreams to Fred), the construction of the most angular sewer system in the whole German Reich was brought to a conclusion.

  Ludwig’s (and Fred’s) seventh birthday approached, and everyone in the village who had any interest in knowing had long ago learned who his father was. Mina had turned out to be more competent at keeping secrets than I was. On many days I simply couldn’t resist the impulse to see my son. Together we wandered up and down the main street, adding up the number of cobbles, and then losing count. We tried to guess by the thunder of the approaching vehicles what kind they were, or else spat cherry pits over the river of stones. On mild summer nights Ludwig would steal out of the bakery, lay himself down in the grass not two steps away from the street, and sleep there better than in his own bed. Though I reminded him constantly how dangerous that was, showing him the squashed corpses of weasels, or giving him a slap, Ludwig wouldn’t be dissuaded—and so I had no choice but to tie myself to him with a rope and sleep beside my son, not three steps from the street, a human anchor in the grass.

  Though I didn’t find much rest there, I took advantage of the little sleeper’s open ear.

  “I’ve never really seen myself as a father. And I still don’t see myself as one.

  “Maybe it’s enough if you and your mother do. Her faith—and not just in our wedding—is stronger than Pastor Meier’s.

  “When you’re older, think twice about whether or not you want to have kids. I’m telling you, you can’t anticipate the consequences.

  “You might wake up one day and realize that you love them!

  “Or the opposite. Look at your aunt. The magnitude of her disappointment at having given life to a Klöble corresponds to the frequency and intensity of her head-shaking. Nobody understands that she doesn’t do it because she’s saying no, but rather because she’s glancing left and right, on the lookout for a better life.

  “The problem is, she’s looking so desperately left and right that she doesn’t see who’s standing in front of her.

  “She should never have gotten started with that Pole. She and I could have easily produced someone like Fred.

  “I hope you don’t play with him. What a useless lug! He stands in front of life as if it was a door—he knows you can open it, but not how.

  “Have you seen his drawings? He has talented little hands, I’ll give you that, but … who wants to look at dead birds? Who’s interested in the eyes of pigs? Or the wings of dung flies?

  “The pictures make it clear how sick he really is. Anni’s right to destroy them. Like I’ve told her, Fred should learn to read. Reading breeds understanding. And understanding leads to more beautiful pictures.”

  Finding Something without Looking for It

  On his seventh birthday, Segendorf’s youngest parishioner opened the town’s very first encyclopedia. The thicket of words on the page so frightened Fred that he immediately clapped it shut again, preferring to follow his father on his patrol of the sewer tunnels.

  “Don’t you at least want to learn your first word?” Anni shouted after them.

  “It’s his birthday,” answered Arkad
iusz.

  “Tomorrow I’ll learn two first words!” Fred promised.

  Arkadiusz was responsible for the maintenance of the underground tunnels, casting around for leaks, patching fissures, dislodging clots of ash, cleaning the outlet valves, exterminating rats, and, when the system flooded, submerging himself for as long as it took to trace the blockage to its source. Who better for the job than ARKADIUSZ, THE (FORMER) FOUR-MINUTE-AND-FORTY-THREE-SECOND MAN? Besides, down there the racket of motor-driven vehicles was pleasantly muffled, the trickling calm relaxed him like a warm bath. Anni told me how he often roamed the tunnels for hours at a stretch, doing the thing he’d always been so good at doing: waiting. For night, when the traffic would die down. For some message from his family, to whom after all this time and with Anni’s help, he’d finally been able to write again—since Segendorf was now, thanks to the widening network of roads, within reach of the German Reichspost. For Fred’s next drawing—brilliantly detailed sketches, in his opinion, which, despite their unusual subjects, filled him with pride, and at least one of which he always carried on his person. For a burst of inspiration that would reveal to him exactly which ingredient his homemade and less than entirely appetizing pierogi were lacking. For an end to the hateful diatribes that spewed from the Volksempfänger radio set, which Pig Farmer Markus liked to blare from his open window. For Anni’s dancing. For Anni’s song. For Anni’s nod.