by Ursula Hegi
“Think of your child’s soul,” he warned.
Your child’s soul. That, too. Soul and bones and skin . . . and how you imagine Michel leaving his wife when you tell him you’re with child . . . and how instead he confesses to his wife—
No more confessing—
Dizzy in the moist August heat, Almut Bechtel raised herself from her knees.
“Wait—” the priest called after her, one hand flailing from the confessional in a lopsided blessing. “Remember . . . in the face of God, my dear child.”
*
The following Saturday, in the very same confessional, the toymaker was assigned his usual twelve Hail Marys and six Our Fathers for lusting after a pregnant woman. He crossed himself and left the confessional. In a pew, nearby, knelt that very same pregnant woman as though he’d summoned her with his sin, and she beckoned him to her. When he knelt by her side, she opened one button of her gray cape, pulled his hand inside where her belly was taut, high, where it felt holier than church with his hand against her belly beneath her cape, and he wanted to stay like this in the amber light with her and the child who was part of her.
“Still?” She raised her face to him.
“Still,” he said because he knew what she was about to ask him.
And she did. “You still believe you could love me?”
“Even more so.”
She closed her eyes, and her face grew composed, as if—Wilhelm thought—she was allowing herself to love her child. Until this moment, she must have steeled herself to let another family raise it; but now her palm slid across the back of his hand that lay on her belly, and as he felt enveloped by the child and by her, he wanted to say, “Who could possibly be a better father than a maker of toys?” But it felt too light, felt only half true, felt as though he suspected her of wanting to marry him for his name only. Just then she opened her eyes to him, and he was struck by the force of her love, on him now, too.
*
That Sunday he took her in the horse-drawn carriage up the school hill, the highest point on the peninsula, and told her it was the custom on Nordstrand to propose on the tidal flats at sunset.
She smiled. “So that’s why you and I are not on the tidal flats?”
“No,” he said. “I mean, yes. Because I can’t . . .”
“Go out there again. I know.”
“But will you?”
“Yes.”
“I mean—Will you? Marry me?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Why?”
“Because—”
“I can’t believe I asked why.”
“Because of your kindness. Because of your beauty—”
He groaned. “I’m not beautiful.”
“Because I like your face. Because I can’t stop thinking of you at night.”
Wilhelm blushed. She had told him he was inventive, joyful, and he was trying to be all that for her.
“Because you are brave.”
Brave? He shook his head. “Being brave is not in me.”
“It is brave to marry a woman who carries another man’s child.”
He winced.
“Do you want me to tell you who he is?”
Up here all around them the land was dry, but the slopes were increasingly damp where they descended into soggy marshes, where wind swept through tall grasses with such recklessness that they heaved like waves.
“Don’t,” he said, quickly, because if he let her, she would tell him the other man’s name. In all truth.
She studied him.
“I don’t want you to be lost to me,” he said.
From the village, people could see the back of the carriage but not inside, where Almut unbuttoned Wilhelm’s shirt. At first he was anxious about the child whose movements rippled the wall of Almut’s belly, but when she let him know with her body how she wanted him, straddled him, he stunned himself, and her. This here—This—He was good at this, amazingly so . . . this giving of pleasure and this taking of pleasure all at once or not all at once, and already he knew this would be there from now on—for him, and between him and Almut—his to return to even if the shadow wings were to spread again.
*
Wilhelm adored the girl who was born one month and four days after his wedding to Almut. Long-limbed and narrow, with beautiful hands, Thekla smiled like a child who’d never been at risk of not having a father, and he took that as trust in him and devoted himself to her. For weeks at a time, he’d forget that she hadn’t come from his seed. She was here, and she was his.
From Kirschholz—cherrywood he carved a kitten that slept curled in one smooth ball, too wide for this daughter to fit into her mouth, too light if she were to drop it on her belly. He sanded the reddish golden wood till it felt silky. His mother showed him how to comfort his daughter when she was crying, and he’d lay Thekla on his knees, her back on his thighs, and bounce her gently, one hand rubbing her belly.
*
Though Wilhelm found an apartment as far as possible from the St. Margaret Home, some gossiped that of course the child did not resemble him with her bold gaze and brown curls, that his love for her sapped him of the honor he’d offered her mother in marriage.
But Lotte Jansen sensed that Almut had chosen her son because he needed her strength as much as she needed his name. Almut would never have just taken the respect that came with his name for her child and herself—she wasn’t like that—but she was giving Wilhelm confidence, joy.
It enraged the midwife when people whispered, “The toymaker has a Kuckuck—cuckoo in his nest.” Kuckucks were lazy, and because they didn’t like to sit on their eggs, they laid them in the nests of other birds, tricking those birds into raising them.
She’d been the center of gossip for so much of her life that she’d taught herself it was none of her concern what others said about her. But this was different: this gossip was hurting her son and his new family. That’s why Lotte Jansen turned on anyone who—under the guise of compassion—urged her to confide. “My daughter-in-law is hardworking and kind,” she’d say. “It is an honor to have her in my family.”
On Nordstrand, gossip would always be part of her daughter-in-law’s life. Here, marriage led not to acceptance but to the loss of pity. Over the last quarter century, nineteen pregnant St. Margaret Girls had snagged—so it was said—local fellows into marriage and instant fatherhood, depriving local girls of potential husbands. But despite marriage, the status of St. Margaret brides remained below that of brides who’d waited till they were properly wed before spreading their legs, and birthed only children who were legitimately conceived.
That stigma of illegitimate birth haunted the St. Margaret mothers and their children, their grandchildren even, so that in a store or church someone might say, “Ach ja, your grandmother was a St. Margaret Girl.”
Tuesday, February 27, 1934
Chapter 8
WE PLANT STIEFMÜTTERCHEN—pansies on my Oma’s grave every anniversary of her death,” says Walter. Crooked teeth but the part in his hair always straight.
“The anniversary of when my cat died,” says Wolfgang.
“Please.” Fräulein Jansen raises both hands. “Can we please talk about anniversaries of celebrations?”
“My sister’s wedding,” Andreas Beil offers and flattens the cowlick that juts out above his left ear. Like a tusk, his sister teases him, calls him Rhinozeros.
“The anniversary of when my aunt became a nun,” says Franz.
“My aunt is a nun, too,” says Walter, who likes to draw pictures of Jesus.
“My aunt eats lunch with us every Sunday,” says Franz.
“But my aunt stayed with us when my Oma was sick,” says Walter.
“My uncle is a priest in Oberkassel,” Jochen says.
As Thekla steps toward the boys, away from the chill of the window, she can see how exhilarated they are to pull her closer with their words, with the proof of their devotion.
All boys are men. And all men are boys. If you treat them all like ten-year-olds, you’ll get their adoration, but you don’t have to acknowledge their power. Because for that power to display itself, it needs your acknowledgment of it, too.
*
But Bruno looks away from her, the skin below his eyes smudged from lack of sleep. She must speak to his parents tonight, make them understand how the uniform would help him to be accepted by his classmates. It does, whenever he smuggles it to school and wears it in the classroom. But that has become complicated now that his mother picks him up for lunch and walks him back to school.
Just last week in the school yard, his first day of no longer wearing his uniform, several boys surrounded him, shoving, yelling.
“Your father will live in hell!”
“Not so!” Bruno cried.
“For all eternity!”
“Protestants don’t get to live in heaven!”
“Not so!”
His parents will want to listen to Thekla because it has been a concern before, boys heckling Bruno that his father will go to hell. Herr Stosick is the principal of the Protestant school, but Bruno has to go to Catholic school because his mother would have been excommunicated for marrying a Protestant if they hadn’t both promised the priest—long before there was a wedding and a Bruno—to raise all future children as Catholics. Except there was only the one, Bruno, after three stillbirths.
*
“I see a bonding among boys who wear the uniform,” Thekla will say to his parents, “stronger than resentments or class differences.”
“All that pride and power?” Günther Stosick may ask.
“And what’s wrong with pride?” she’ll ask him right back. “Haven’t we done for long enough without it?”
“We were more human without it.” He’ll fold his hands in front of his belly. He’s not flabby but thickset and strong, with a belly that starts high.
Thekla cannot fathom how Gisela can be attracted to his body. To his mind, yes, he’s brilliant; and to his eyes, a gorgeous deep brown. But that belly . . .
“It’s about respect for our children,” she’ll tell both Stosicks. “About a future for our children. The Hitler-Jugend offers them adventure. Equality. It’s impossible for a schoolchild to avoid all involvement in youth activities. What harm can it do, letting Bruno go to some meetings? We had songs and bonfires, too.”
She just hopes that ugly dog of theirs will be asleep. If not, Henrietta will jam herself against Thekla’s thighs again, nudge her to stroke that thick neck, that mottled black fur so short it feels like skin. With the Stosicks right there, Thekla will pet Henrietta. But whenever she’s alone with the dog, Thekla keeps some piece of furniture between herself and Henrietta.
“The uniform made such a difference for Richard,” she’ll tell the Stosicks. “Until then, the boys were merciless with him.”
No. That would be inviting the Stosicks to tell her Richard’s situation is hardly comparable because he’s illegitimate. They may get offended because his mother is one of those widows. Every town has them. Women whose husbands died in the Great War and who resorted to prostitution.
Thekla must be diplomatic with the Stosicks, or she’ll lose her apartment. She was lucky to find a place she can afford without needing the Führer’s help. Not that his help is available to her. Still, he should grant unmarried teachers the same loan he grants to newlyweds, one thousand marks, almost a year’s income. He rewards only married couples. For the birth of each child, he reduces the loan by a quarter, motivating women to push one child after another from their bodies. After four children for the Vaterland, the families owe nothing. So unjust to the teachers who devote themselves to the children of those families.
*
Ever since Thekla was three, she has known she was a teacher. Knowing began the afternoon she found a chestnut by the flour mill and gave it to her father, Wilhelm, who was ill again, sitting by the stove in his black suit, eyes pale and winter-still, hands like fallen twigs on his knees. He didn’t look at her. Only at the tiny blond hairs between his knuckles. She lifted his left hand, turned it palm up. It was warm. Because that side of him was near the stove. Mutti said it was the side where his heart pumped.
Thekla set the chestnut into Vati’s palm, took hold of his thumb, and rubbed it across the glossy-brown shell. When his fingers began to quiver, she felt the teaching that lived inside her: This is what I am, what I want to do.
His eyes flickered, let her in just long enough to follow him down a shaft toward a blink of lucidity—so that is where Vati lives when he goes away like this—follow him deeper yet, down, down so fast it was like falling, and suddenly mist and glitter and color bursting open in his memory—because of the chestnut and the skin—and as she felt him reaching for that mist and glitter and color, she became Wilhelm, was Wilhelm climbing a tree and tossing green apples to his friends . . . was Wilhelm sledding down a hill with a dog chasing him . . . was Wilhelm falling, an infant, Wilhelm—But already the passage was slamming shut—because I don’t love you enough?—and he was lost to her. But not forever. Because now Thekla understood it was touch that opened him up—chestnut and skin brought together by the teacher. By the teacher’s way of teaching. Mine—and that once she knew how to bring him back so he’d be like other fathers, she could love him, too, the way she loved Mutti.
Chapter 9
OTTO’S PULSE is in his throat, fast like some nights when he has the teacher under the blanket with him, her hand with his hand there, nasty and beneath the warmth and—“Did you want to say something, Otto?” his teacher is asking.
He covers his throat to hide his pulse but feels it in his palm, his wrist, nasty, and confession isn’t till Saturday.
“Otto?”
What if she can tell by looking at him what he does with her at night?
His belly feels warm, heavy. His belly and his legs. Sins get heavier with each hour you can’t confess them.
She nods at him. Waits.
“The anniversary of . . . of my own birthday?”
“Another good example,” she praises him. She likes this thoughtful boy who is drawn to the passion of learning. A few of her boys are all brain. While others are all body: Andreas, Wolfgang. But Otto is both.
“You are both,” Fräulein Siderova told Thekla when she was a student in this very classroom. “Brain and body. I was so much like you when I was a girl.”
“I want to be a teacher, too,” Thekla said.
“You will be an amazing teacher,” her teacher encouraged her. “A natural and inventive teacher.”
*
Fräulein Siderova always had one favorite student—allowed herself only the one—and when she’d part from that girl at the end of the school year, she’d still invite her to her house, so that, over the years, there were favorites of all ages whom she taught to prepare a formal tea party, to arrange her table with linens and flowers, with Russian porcelain so thin that light shimmered through the hand-painted violets, the kind of porcelain—the girls felt certain—their mothers and aunts would have locked away from them.
The first with new fashions, Fräulein Siderova would ask her young guests, “How do I look now?”
When she had her reddish-brown hair cut in a bob before other women in the village dared to wear it that style, she asked Michel Abramowitz, the husband of her best friend, Ilse, to take her photo. Michel was not just a lawyer but also an amateur photographer who took pictures of the townspeople in his unique style that considered the background as much as the individual, who was always off to one side, never in the middle.
The photo with the short bob exposed a tiny birthmark on Fräulein Siderova’s jaw near her earlobe where her hair used to cover it.
“Like a smudge from a kiss,” her girls sighed.
“A kiss from her lover . . .”
They whispered about her oil portrait above her credenza. So romantic, the girls said when she told them it was painted by an artist s
he’d met aboard a ship on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. So romantic, how she watched him there from her painting.
*
The old women in town said that during those times when there was an abundance of dying, there was also an abundance of poetry. “As if there ever could be too much poetry,” they would say.
Some of the people Sonja Siderova read to were grandparents or parents of her students, even some of her students once they became women and the high fever of childbirth took them. And because she was not frightened of death, she stilled the fear of the dying who had faith in her power to transform their fear by holding it inside her soul, however briefly, before she let it dissipate.
Glass bowls the townspeople gave her, vases that she kept empty to let the light pass through. If needed, they’d fetch her from school to read to their dying, poems that they’d liked as children and that took them back to being children: playing on the jetties with the froth of river near their ankles . . . or running through forest into that green-white flicker of sun . . . or sledding down the dike through whirls of snowflakes against their cheeks. Sometimes the dying were afraid of what had been unfinished with a parent, say, or a child, a sibling. In their eyes—especially in the eyes of those who figured they had no secrets—Fräulein Siderova saw their secrets, but she never revealed them because she believed that you held claim to your own secrets.
During her absences from school, her friend, Frau Abramowitz, would often arrive and sketch with the students. She, too, had studied to be a teacher, but she couldn’t work as a teacher because she was a married woman now. If she wasn’t available, it was assumed that Fräulein Siderova’s most accomplished student—like Thekla Jansen in 1912 and Trudi Montag in 1925—would lead her class in memorizing one of the poems she marked for just those absences in her Echtermeyer collection.