Ursula Hegi the Burgdorf Cycle Boxed Set

by Ursula Hegi

  Suddenly, they all were very quiet. They knew only too well that those who were brave or foolish enough to speak out against the government were made examples of: they were beaten, had their belongings seized, or were sent away. To come to their defense was dangerous. You knew it was safer to pretend not to notice when the police came to your neighbor’s house late at night, to keep your lights off even if you wanted to help, to walk away if one of your friends was pulled aside to be questioned.

  “Last week they stuck a priest from Krefeld into the KZ,” Emil Hesping said.

  Trudi felt chilled at the mention of Konzentrationslager, those camps that were correction centers for so-called “asocials,” for Communists and other political prisoners who didn’t fit in.

  She and her father were the last to leave the Abramowitzs’ house, and as they stepped into the night, the stench that the flood had left seemed even harsher than during the day. The clouds—though it was too dark to see them—felt dense and close to the earth as if sheltering the town, infusing it with the deceptive promise of peace.

  “If all the people who thought like us …,” Trudi said, “if we all got together—maybe we could stop this.”

  “Those points of connection—they’re the weak spots. As soon as we build bridges to others, we’re in danger. That’s when they catch us.”

  “I don’t think Herr Blau would tell.”

  “He’s a good man, but he’s frightened. You know that people only hear that part of a story they can handle.”

  What he said felt true because she’d seen it happen when she’d carried her stories around town. Some people didn’t want to hear all the details. They would ask, but they’d distract themselves with interpretations that had little to do with her stories, yet gave her new material. Some would walk away or change her endings. But that was all right: a story stayed alive that way, shaped and reshaped in each telling, signifying something different to everyone who was affected by it.

  “Most of what’s happening we don’t even know.” Her father stopped in front of their door and fidgeted with his keys.

  Trudi touched the bark of the chestnut tree. Above her, she felt the span of its branches, still bare. Soon, buds would burst into leaves and wobbly candle blossoms.

  “The news we get in the paper is filtered.” He unlocked the door and turned on the light in the hallway. “Words have taken on new meanings. We learn more from whispered rumors than from the printed word. We live in a time when we all become messengers. You—more than anyone I know—are prepared for that, Trudi.”

  She nodded. Ever since she had stood next to Frau Simon on the sidewalk that morning, she had felt the language becoming even narrower. There was no space for disagreement. She had become suspect just by being there with Frau Simon. Ineffective. At risk.

  Her father was watching her. He was watching her with tired and empathetic eyes, and Trudi wasn’t even sure if he spoke or if she felt his concern, because what she thought she heard was, “Be careful, my daughter”

  Every afternoon, Trudi checked Frau Simon’s store and apartment on Barbarossa Strasse, but the doors had been padlocked the day after the arrest, and no one answered when she knocked. She thought about Frau Simon every time she rubbed lotion into her hands, every time she saw a woman with a hat designed by the red-haired milliner. Some people thought she was still being held in Düsseldorf, while others assumed she’d been released and was visiting her sister in Osnabrück. A month after her arrest, all hats disappeared from the display window, and the shop was turned into headquarters for the Hitler-Jugend.

  When Frau Simon was released after nearly four months and returned to Burgdorf, she looked as though she’d shrunk: her face seemed smaller, and her once unruly curls lay flat on her head. Her vivaciousness was gone, and she urged caution on her friends, saying that if you kept quiet things would get better.

  “You sound like Frau Abramowitz,” Trudi objected.

  “Don’t—” her father said. “Unless you have shared Frau Simon’s experiences.”

  Though Frau Simon’s clothes looked familiar, they no longer fit her properly and looked as if they’d been made for someone else. Eva Sturm furnished an apartment for her on the third floor of her husband’s building. The rooms of Alexander’s niece, Jutta, were right next to Frau Simon’s. At seventeen, the girl had lived there by herself for nearly a year, ever since her mother, whose health had always been brittle, had died from pneumonia and Jutta had turned down her uncle’s invitation to live with him and Eva on the first floor.

  “But we have plenty of space,” Alexander had insisted.

  “I want to stay up here.”

  “You’re too young to be by yourself.”

  “You were running a business when you were my age.”

  “She’ll visit us every day,” Eva had said. “Right, Jutta? And she’ll eat with us.”

  When Jutta had agreed, her uncle had given in.

  Frau Simon remained inside her apartment most of the time, and if she stepped outdoors, she’d avoid walking past her old building, where, in the center of the display window, her pyramid-shaped mirror reflected the somber smile of the Führer and the garish red of the flag. She would take a detour around the far side of the church square to get to the pay-library, where, every Tuesday, she’d check out two romances and two American Westerns.

  “Have you gone to Frau Doktor Rosen about that headache?” Leo Montag asked her one mild afternoon, late that October of 1938, when she came in to return her weekly supply of books.

  Frau Simon nodded. “She gave me some pills.”

  He handed the books to Trudi, who marked them as returned. “And did you take the pills?” he asked.

  “I don’t much believe in pills. But it’s good of you to worry.”

  “Emil tells me you won’t see him.”

  “Not the way I look. Not until I—”

  “You are a very good-looking woman, Lotte.”

  One of her hands floated up to her hair.

  “And that cardigan looks lovely on you.”

  “Emil gave it to me for my birthday. A few years ago.” She told him to feel the white mohair sleeve. “Fifty percent mohair, fifty percent silk. I guess some people would say it’s not proper to accept gifts from a man you’re not married to.”

  “I wouldn’t fret about that,” Leo assured her.

  She smiled, the first smile anyone had seen on her since she’d been released from prison. “My grandmother used to tell me that a gentleman is not supposed to give a lady any gift that lies next to her skin—except for gloves.”

  Trudi laughed. “Why gloves?”

  Frau Simon had to think for a moment. “Only you would ask that. Maybe it has to do with shaking hands. I mean, when I shake a man’s hand, his skin touches mine, right? Therefore, gloves would be all right because they cover a place that’s … that’s—”

  “Available?” Trudi helped.

  “Available, right. And any skin covered by this sweater should not be available to any man other than a husband.”

  “It’s like saying the gift is like the man’s hands. Just think of all the places that cardigan touches you.”

  Frau Simon did a little dance with her shoulders, and for a moment she looked as lively as she used to.

  “Now you’ll have to marry Herr Hesping,” Trudi teased her.

  “Stop it, Trudi.”

  “We’ll have the wedding right here. I’ll bake a cake and—”

  “That man will never let a woman slip a ring on his finger. Maybe that’s what I like best about him.”

  “Laughing becomes you,” Leo said. “May I tell Emil that you’re looking well?”

  Frau Simon hesitated. “I’ll bring the books back next Tuesday at three. That is—if he wants to see for himself.”

  The second Thursday of November, Trudi woke up early—tired and agitated as though she hadn’t slept at all. She always felt more tired when winter set in as if her body needed time to adjust to
the cold. Besides, her knees had been aching for nearly a week. Frau Doktor Rosen had told her the pain came from her hips.

  “Then why do I feel it in my knees?” Trudi had asked.

  The Frau Doktor, whose practice had diminished even more, had told her the joints in her hips were inflamed.

  “But that happens to old people. I’m only twenty-three.”

  “Some Zwerge have those problems when they’re quite young.”

  “But you don’t have any other patients who’re Zwerge.”

  “I’ve made it my business to read about them.”

  Trudi had stared at her. “Because of me?”

  “Because of you.”

  As Trudi shifted in her bed, trying to find a comfortable position to carry her into morning, she allowed herself to imagine the doctor surrounded by tall stacks of medical books, searching for information on Zwerge that would help her unlock Trudi’s joints and lengthen her bones until her body would be of normal height and free of pain. Yet, deep inside, she had already accepted that there really wasn’t anything that could be done. She thought of all the people who moaned about things they didn’t like in their lives—their work, their houses, their friends—and she was envious because they could change all that.

  When she opened the library, the bakery truck stopped outside, and Alfred Meier came running in to tell her that, during the night, windows of Jewish businesses and synagogues in Düsseldorf had been smashed. He’d been out making deliveries since dawn, and he’d heard that buildings had been set on fire, and that a whole block of apartments next to a Jewish jewelry store had burned down.

  As the day progressed, other customers reported hearing from friends and family in Krefeld and Oberkassel and Köln. Trudi didn’t even try to work in the library: she kept circling through Burgdorf, letting people know what she had found out, while picking up news of destruction in other cities and towns. In Burgdorf only two businesses had been damaged—a yarn shop and a restaurant, both owned by Jews. It looked as if someone had tried to set fire to the synagogue, because in back of the building the stucco beneath one window was blackened.

  “Maybe it won’t happen here,” Frau Abramowitz told Leo Montag while her husband buttoned his camel hair coat and left for an emergency meeting at the synagogue.

  But Leo recalled what his wife had said to him the year before their wedding—that things in Burgdorf happened slower and later than in most other places—and he kept troubled watch over his friends. That night, very few people in the neighborhood slept well, but when in the morning only a few broken windows were discovered in town—though the demolition was said to continue in Düsseldorf and Oberkassel—Leo hoped that Frau Abramowitz had been right.

  Friday afternoon Trudi gift-wrapped a set of china cups that she and her father would take to Helmut Eberhardt’s wedding the following day. His mother had come over to invite them in person, and they’d only accepted because they didn’t want to disappoint her. Helmut was marrying Hilde Sommer, who had finished her training as a midwife and shared his passion for order. According to the pharmacist, she was pregnant, well on her way to a kinderreiche Familie, but Trudi found it impossible to confirm that rumor even when she got close to her, because Hilde was a heavy woman to begin with. Well, at least if she was pregnant, Helmut wouldn’t be able to divorce her for Unfruchtbarkeit—barrenness—or Nachwuchsverweigerung—refusal to have offspring. Both were considered direct opposition to the government and had become valid causes for divorce.

  Late Friday night, less than twelve hours before Helmut’s wedding to the blond midwife at St. Martin’s Church, he and two other SA men dragged Herr Abramowitz from his bedroom, and when the tall lawyer tried to protest, his pipe collection and cameras were trampled in front of him, and he was dragged across the fragments, screaming as they cut his feet and ankles.

  Frau Abramowitz clung to Helmut Eberhardt’s arm, begging him to leave her husband alone. And because she couldn’t think of anything else, she cried out, “I know your mother well. You come from a fine family.”

  “Stay back,” he warned her.

  She heard them in the street—the smashing of glass, their heels on the sidewalk, car doors slamming. An engine started. Then silence. Tears clogging her breath, she tried to phone her daughter in Oberkassel, but she could no longer remember Ruth’s number, though she dialed it nearly every day, and she had to look it up. Her hand shook so badly that her finger slipped from the dial, and she had to try several times before she reached her daughter.

  When Ruth—against the advice of her husband—offered to drive to Burgdorf, Frau Abramowitz refused. “Don’t come here. It’s not safe.”

  “Then it’s not safe for you either,” Ruth argued.

  “They didn’t take me this time.”

  “Mother—Mother, I love you.”

  “I love you too, Ruthie.”

  “Let me send a taxi for you.”

  “I have to be here. For your father when he comes back.”

  There was a long pause on the phone.

  “He will come back,” Frau Abramowitz said.

  “Of course he will.”

  “He is a lawyer, after all. He’ll make them understand it’s a mistake.”

  She hung up the phone after promising to call Ruth the moment she heard anything. Her beige sweater pulled over her nightgown, she dashed across the street, barely avoiding the broken glass on her sidewalk, but before she could bang at the Montags’ door, Trudi opened it.

  “What happened?” She grasped Frau Abramowitz’s hands.

  “Michel…” The older woman began to cry. “They came for Michel—took him away.”

  “Come inside. Please …”

  “I can’t.” She kept looking toward the door. “He may come back any moment.”

  Not right away, Trudi thought, but what she said was, “I’ll watch for him from the window. Stay with us tonight.”

  “They made such a mess, breaking things … without any reason.”

  Trudi’s father came hobbling down the stairs in his bathrobe. “Frau Abramowitz,” he said, “Ilse,” his voice helpless with grief, and opened his arms, embracing her as Frau Abramowitz must have imagined it many times, only under much different circumstances.

  She briefly leaned into his embrace, then stepped away. “I must go home.”

  “You can stay here,” Leo offered.

  “Michel might phone.”

  “I’ll go with you then.”

  “You will?”

  “Of course. Let me get some clothes on.” He started toward the stairs.

  Though Trudi wanted to come along too, she sensed that her father, alone, would be able to comfort Frau Abramowitz far more than if she were with them. From the open door she watched the two, Frau Abramowitz in her thin nightgown, her father oddly formal in his Sunday suit as if the occasion deserved no less, their arms linked in such a way that they seemed to hold one another up—not unlike old couples who have decades of practice in adjusting their pace to one another. Carefully, they stepped across the shards. Trudi thought she heard the key turn after the Abramowitzs’ front door closed behind them, as though they belonged inside that house together.

  She wrapped the coat of the Russian soldier around herself and climbed onto the counter of the pay-library. From there, she could see through the window. The light in the Abramowitzs’ living room was off, and Frau Abramowitz stood framed by the splinters that stuck from the window frame like translucent petals of an outlandish flower. The outline of her pale sweater filled the gap where the glass had been, unmoving, as if she had always been there, a guardian, until it became impossible for Trudi to remember a time when that window had not been filled with her shape.

  The taller outline of Trudi’s father saturated the space around Frau Abramowitz like a cloak. That entire night the two of them stood in the dark window above the littered street, waiting for Michel Abramowitz; and whenever Trudi dozed off on the counter, she was soon awakened by some fara
way screams and shattering glass, and she’d see the contour of Frau Abramowitz in that window and, behind it, her father’s as though the two of them had not moved at all, as though every word spoken had passed between them like this.

  When the dense texture of night wore thin and cries of roosters swirled above the roofs, Trudi spotted something crawling across the intersection of Schreberstrasse and Barbarossa Strasse, an injured dog, perhaps, or some ancient beast dragging itself toward the dawn of mankind, the doom of mankind. It was a shape that embodied the ugliness of the night, and Trudi wondered how long it had been crawling toward them. Perhaps it had been there for a long time and only dawn had revealed it. But just then Frau Abramowitz loosened herself from the window and flew from the house—Trudi’s father close behind her in his uneven gait—toward whatever it was that was crawling toward them.

  Hoisting the seal coat to her knees, Trudi raced after them, and when she caught up, she saw Herr Abramowitz, his neck and face bloodied, his pajamas ripped. He could not stand, not even when Leo Montag tried to support him, and they had to spread the seal coat on the ground, roll him onto the rugged hide, and carry him—Frau Abramowitz and Trudi on one side, Leo on the other—up Schreberstrasse and through the arched door of his house. Trudi’s arms were aching as they used to when she’d hung from the door frame, and her father’s breath was coming in hard gasps. Only Frau Abramowitz’s breath was even, because carrying her husband took far less strength than waiting for him.

  When they laid Michel Abramowitz down on the sofa in his living room and washed him, careful not to touch his bruises, they found that his nose and several ribs had been broken. All along the inside of his left arm were cigarette burns, and his back was swollen with raw welts. He had lost quite a few teeth, all from the outer row, and his wife could see the second row—a quirk of nature, she used to think—as if he’d grown that extra set of teeth for this night.

  His voice was hoarse, and they had to bend close to hear him when he forbade them to take him to the Theresienheim or the hospital in Düsseldorf. “I’m safer at home,” he insisted in a murmur and asked his wife to bring him the Watte—cotton—that she used for earaches and taking off nail polish.