by Ursula Hegi
With my teeth I uncorked the bottle. “All you need to do is close your eyes and believe it will work.”
“What’s in there?” Renate stared at me.
“Holy water.” I poured some of it into my palm. It felt cold and smelled musty.
“Wait.” She reached into her mouth with her right forefinger and thumb and took out a pink wad of chewing gum. After sticking it on the side of her crate, she closed her eyes and raised her face as though about to receive communion.
I rubbed the holy water up and down Renate’s calf, between her toes, along the arch of her foot. Light filtered in uneven splotches from the dust-smeared light bulb above us. I’ve always had an enormous capacity to believe. Stories, miracles, lies—with the right details, I can be convinced of the authenticity of nearly anything, even Hasenbrot, rabbit bread, which my father brought me many evenings when he returned from working on people’s teeth. Handing me half a sandwich wrapped in oil-stained brown paper, he’d tell me that on his way home he’d seen a Hase, a rabbit, by the side of the road, carrying this package—he’d motion to the sandwich—between its front paws. He leapt from his car to catch it, but the Hase ran off with the bundle; my father followed it across the brook and chased it along Schreberstrasse until the Hase finally dropped the package next to the brook and disappeared. The bundle was about to slide into the water when my father saw it.
Every time my father chased the Hase through a different area, and every time there was that one breath-catching moment when the bundle was almost lost all over again because a car nearly ran over it or a dog tried to tear it from his hands. I’d unfold the brown paper with something bordering on reverence. Though the bread was always a bit stale, the meat limp, and the cheese soggy, I’ve never tasted anything as delicious as my father’s Hasenbrot.
And it was with that kind of faith that I dribbled holy water over Renate’s foot and leg. I kneaded it into the crescent-shaped callus at her heel, into the bony disk of her knee. Her teeth had released her lower lip, and she breathed evenly.
Already I felt a difference in her leg: the skin seemed warmer and didn’t look as pale anymore. With each day her leg would stretch itself, grow fuller, stronger. It would be able to keep up with the other leg when she pedaled her bike. She’d play hopscotch. Tag.
“You can look now.”
Renate blinked, staring at me, then at her leg.
“See?” I bent over her leg, my heart fast.
Cautiously she probed her ankle with her fingertips, then her calf. “I think so.”
“It’s already begun to change.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“Should we do it again tomorrow? To make double sure?”
“No,” I said, instinctively knowing the difference between a miracle and a treatment. “All you need to do is believe it worked.”
She raised her leg from my knees. “It feels different.”
“See?”
“What do we do with the rest of the holy water?”
I hadn’t even thought of that. The bottle was still half full. It didn’t feel right to pour it out or leave it here in the basement.
“We could drink it,” Renate suggested.
I felt as if the eyes of the apostles were watching me as I raised the bottle to my lips, swallowed, and gave it to Renate who drank and handed it back to me. It tasted the way damp stones smell and within an hour I had stomach cramps, punishment, no doubt, for stealing holy water, a sin I didn’t dare confess.
Over the next weeks I watched for signs of change in Renate’s left leg. I pictured the pores closing, the skin losing its chalky color, the calf filling out.
“Does it feel different?” I’d ask her, and she’d nod and say, “I think so.”
The end of April we took our bicycles to the annual blessing of vehicles on the Burgdorf fairgrounds where Herr Pastor Beier sprinkled holy water on cars, trucks, tractors, motor scooters, and bikes to keep them in good condition and out of accidents. Renate still couldn’t keep up with me as we rode back to her house. By then the midwife had accepted my apology and welcomed me back into her house, all the time cleaning up behind us.
In July Renate and I picked purple clover blossoms on the fairgrounds and watched the gypsies set up their tents and booths. I found myself staring at their faces, afraid to discover resemblances between Renate and them, relieved when I didn’t. We rode the merry-go-round, ate white sausages with mustard, threw Ping-Pong balls through wooden loops. The biggest tent had been set up for the circus, and Renate’s mother took Adi and us to the Saturday performance. We applauded when five fat clowns tumbled out of a tiny car, when the animal tamer stuck his head inside the lion’s mouth, and when the elephants circled the arena, their trunks holding the tails of the elephants ahead of them.
During intermission Adi bought us candied apples, and when we returned to our seats, the lights dimmed. It turned dark inside the tent, and the voices faded into whispers, then silence. High above us a slow shimmer began to spread. It came from a woman with black hair who stood on the tightrope in a short golden dress. I felt Renate’s hand on my arm; her fingers were dry, warm. The woman’s arms and legs shimmered as she set one foot in front of the other and crossed the wide gap.
If there were nets that day in the circus, Renate and I didn’t see them. We believed the woman was safe. It had to do with faith. We had proven that to ourselves that afternoon in the cellar when the holy water had worked after all, not healing Renate’s leg but the rift between us. Some acts of faith, I believe, have the power to grant us something infinitely wiser than what we imagine. We all have our props for faith, and the shakier the faith, the more props we need. But sometimes the faith is strong enough so that an old vinegar bottle with holy water and a crate next to the apple shelves will do.
My Father’s Reckless Act
“Don’t tell your parents you heard this from me,” Trudi Montag whispered, “but your father was engaged when he met your mother.”
We stood on the fairgrounds with our bicycles, surrounded by hundreds of people who were waiting for Herr Pastor Beier’s blessing of the vehicles. Since Renate was sick in bed with the measles, I’d pushed my bike next to Trudi Montag, who liked to arrive early to get a space in front where some of the sacred sprinkles would land on the child’s bicycle she used. She’d bought it before I was born with some of the money her Aunt Helene used to smuggle to her from America during the war, hidden inside spools of thread. She’d remove the round label at one end, roll up the money, and push it into the hollow core of the spool before gluing the label back on.
“The woman’s name was Brigitte Raudschuss. She was a teacher. The daughter of Wilhelm Raudschuss, that rich lawyer in Oberkassel?” It came out like a question.
I shook my head, too stunned to answer.
“She was getting along in years … around your father’s age when he proposed. And he wasn’t so young either. He must have been—mid-thirties, at least?”
“He was thirty-six when he married my mother.”
“Who was nineteen, I know, nearly half his age.” Trudi Montag smiled. “Anyhow, your father’s wedding with Brigitte Raudschuss was set two months away when your mother came to his office to have a filling replaced. …”
That part of the story I knew from my father. Although he’d never mentioned Brigitte Raudschuss to me, he’d told me about that afternoon when he’d fallen in love with my mother. She’d come in late for her appointment because she’d been painting the Sternburg. Carrying her easel and paints, she arrived at his office when he was about to lock up. Though he’d taken care of her teeth before, he’d never really looked at her, at least not the way he looked at her that hot, late day in June when her blond hair was tangled and her skin flushed from running. Strands of damp hair clung to her forehead and neck. She was a student at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf.
He let himself be convinced to keep his office open for her although his assistant had already left for
the day. “But only if you let me have a look at your painting,” he told her.
“I had to finish it before the light changed.”
He held her picture of the Sternburg with both hands and, silently, gazed at the layers of light that illuminated the draw bridge, the moat where bright red leaves floated like rose petals, the baroque tower that grew into the cloudless sky.
“… and within five weeks they were married,” Trudi Montag said, “an earlier wedding date than the one he’d set with Brigitte Raudschuss. Brigitte’s father, the lawyer, even came to Burgdorf one morning.”
“What happened?”
“His car was parked outside your father’s office for an hour and twenty minutes. But whatever he said didn’t make any difference because your father married your mother the next week.”
Herr Pastor Beier walked across the fairgrounds, followed by two altar boys. One of them swung the thurible back and forth on its silver chain to let the incense rise into the moist air; the other carried the boat for the incense and the silver bucket with holy water. I’d heard of car engines that had lost their coughs after the blessing, of tractors that had been rusty until they’d been touched with holy water, of bicycle tires that had leaked air until Herr Pastor had blessed them.
“Have you seen her since then … Brigitte Raudschuss?” I asked Trudi Montag.
She shrugged. “A few times. Never got married though I hear there was one fellow who proposed. Worked for her father. As far as I know she still teaches in Oberkassel.”
Almost everyone I knew had come to the fairgrounds for the annual blessing: Frau Weiler and Frau Wilhelmini had full shopping nets hanging from the handlebars of their bicycles; the Hansen bakery truck stood between the town’s fire engine and the delivery truck from Becker’s grocery store; Albert Zimmermann, the painter, leaned against his motorcycle, which gleamed as if he had polished it for hours; Frau Behrmeier, who used to be my second-grade teacher, sat in her car with Frau Buttgereit, our music teacher, who wore one of her awful hats—the purple one with the two peacock feathers; Karin Baum was there with a new white bicycle—probably from her grandfather’s store.
My parents had bought my bicycle in Düsseldorf. They wouldn’t speak to Karin’s grandfather who owned the only bicycle shop in Burgdorf. Sometimes I missed being friends with Karin. Until we were both seven, we used to play together every day, but because of her grandfather, I was no longer allowed to go to her apartment. His shop was downstairs in the house where Karin lived, and it was a filthy place—that’s what my mother had said.
Karin’s long brown braid swung across her shoulder as she turned in my direction, perhaps aware that I was watching her, and I waved to her. She raised her hand and looked away.
“Falling in love with your mother,” Trudi Montag said, “was the one reckless act your father committed in his life, and he has lived since then as if to make up for it.”
I worked the tip of my right shoe into the dry ground, loosening a small rock. The sky was leaden except for shifting streaks of pearl where the clouds thinned out and let the sun through. By July this whole field would be covered with clover, buttercups, and dandelions. Gypsies would appear with their tents and cotton candy, their fat lady and fortune-teller. Renate and I would ride the merry-go-round and ferris wheel, win fuzzy animals at the shooting booth, and dare each other to keep our eyes open inside the haunted house.
“I can see why he fell in love with her,” Trudi Montag said. “Even if she is a little … wild, your mother is beautiful. And tall,” she added with a sigh that made me wonder how often she’d wished her body would stretch itself and grow. “But I still haven’t figured out why she married him. She could have had any man.”
Perhaps my mother liked the way my father’s gray eyes rested on her face as if he were trying to memorize it; perhaps she liked how his full beard curled back from the tender outline of his lips; or perhaps she sensed that he’d always understand her need to paint.
“Any man she wanted.” Trudi Montag nodded.
Sometimes my father seemed baffled by my mother, worried about the risks she would take, while she became impatient with him. Yet, whenever he visited her studio, they stood close together as they looked at her newest painting, and when I went with them for walks in the Grafenberg Forest, they held hands.
“But she picked my father,” I said to Trudi Montag.
Herr Pastor Beier made his way along our row. In his left hand he held a silver handle with a ball at one end. While his right hand drew the sign of the cross, he dipped the handle into the bucket and swished it through the air, sprinkling us and our bicycles with holy water that escaped from the ball’s tiny holes.
My mother didn’t believe in the blessings. She had stopped going to church when my brother, Joachim, had died. My father was the one who went to mass with me every Sunday and who used to read me the Joseph story from the Bible until I’d learned to read on my own. Sitting on his knees, I had listened to him read my favorite story about Joseph who saw meaning in dreams, whose brothers sold him to the Egyptians and didn’t see him again until he’d interpreted the Pharoah’s dreams and saved Egypt from famine.
Moments after the drops of holy water touched us, they merged with splatters of rain that plastered Trudi Montag’s white curls to her forehead and soaked my skirt and blouse. Herr Pastor Beier walked faster, blessing three or four vehicles at a time. Water ran from his round face like tears and splotched the purple chasuble that stuck out in front of his belly. He liked food more than anyone I knew. One Easter he’d devoured Rolfs chocolate bunny and most of his colored eggs. His eyes had glazed over with satisfaction, reminding me of infants who forget everything around them when they’re fed.
Trudi Montag and I rode our bikes to her pay-library where Anton Immers, the butcher’s father, stood outside the locked door with an umbrella, waiting to check out a new nurse-and-doctor novel. An old man with distrustful eyes, he finished at least two books a week; yet, when he returned them, he always complained that they hadn’t been as interesting as the ones he had read before.
“Didn’t see you at the blessing,” Trudi Montag said.
He grumbled something to himself and shuffled toward the bookshelves. While he read jacket flaps, I went into the bathroom, dried my hair, and wrung out my plaid skirt above the tub. On the inside of the door hung a long mirror. I wondered how Trudi Montag felt when she climbed out of the tub and saw the reflection of her stunted body. Did she ever get used to it? Or did she need to turn her back toward her image as she dried herself?
That evening, when my mother tucked me in, she wore her watered-silk gown and had braided her hair into a soft double coil at the nape of her neck. She and my father were on their way to see Aida at the Düsseldorf Opernhaus where they had a subscription. Each time he bought her a box of sugar-coated almonds in the lobby of the Opernhaus. They were pink and glossy, and she saved most of them for me. I always made them last as long as possible, letting them dissolve in my mouth, anticipating the moment when the pink taste would give way to the essence of the almond hidden deep within the sweet shell.
My mother sat down on the edge of the bed. She smelled of perfume and cigarette smoke.
I ran one finger across the crisp silk of her skirt. “Why did you marry Dad?”
“Now where did that come from?”
I shrugged.
“I know why he married me.” She gave me a mischievous smile. “So he could have my painting of the Sternburg. First he asked if it was for sale, and when I said no, he figured he’d better marry me.”
“That day … did he drill your tooth?”
She nodded.
“Did it hurt?”
“He was careful.”
I felt cheated. My father had always sent me to another dentist. “I don’t want to be the one to hurt you,” he’d tell me. Still, I felt enraged whenever I flinched under the drill of Dr. Beck, convinced my father would be gentler. I felt excluded when Karin Baum and Renat
e went to him, even Frau Talmeister, who lived across the street and was one of my father’s worst patients. “She starts shaking before I turn on the drill,” he said. Yet even she would answer, “Not much,” when I asked her if my father ever hurt her.
“But that was the last time he worked on my teeth,” my mother told me. She too had to go to Dr. Beck with his wide chin and those black hairs inside his nostrils.
I wished I could ask her about Brigitte Raudschuss—if she’d ever met her, if she was tall like my mother, if she liked peach pie.
“Remember, lights out at nine.” As she bent to kiss me, the silk of her gown swished against my arm. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“And you’ll bring me almonds?”
“Don’t I always?” she asked, and I knew that, when I woke up, I’d find a glossy box with almonds on my night table, certain proof that my parents had slipped into my room while I was asleep.
After my parents left, I retrieved the current romance novel Frau Brocker had hidden under the cover of the ironing board. The folded tissue, which she kept as a bookmark, was only between the pages 73 and 74. I was already on page 145. But I couldn’t concentrate on the story of the heiress who was betrayed by her aunt and rescued by a baron. I kept wondering what I would be like if my father had married Brigitte Raudschuss and if she were my mother. A teacher, Trudi Montag had said. She’s in school while I’m in a classroom down the hall. In the afternoons we do things together. She likes books, sledding on the dike in the winter, hot chocolate, walks along the river…
But if my father had married Brigitte Raudschuss, I would have never been born or—at least—I would have been someone entirely different. I tried to imagine him with her, a quiet woman closer to him in age, and all at once I felt strange as though I’d done something to hurt my mother.
“Falling in love with your mother was the one reckless act your father committed in his life. …”
I’d never thought of my father as reckless, though it was a word he used when he cautioned my mother against driving so fast or swimming nude in the ocean. Every summer, when we rented a cottage on the island Wangerooge in the North Sea, my father refused to let me swim out with my mother.