by Ursula Hegi
“Oh, Bruno . . .” Why does he have to be so dramatic? “Sshhh . . . I’ll talk to your parents about how important it is for you to be in the Hitler-Jugend.”
But he only cries harder.
“Bruno? Listen to me.”
“If you tell—”
“I’ll be careful.”
“—Vati will nail my window shut and I’ll never get out.”
He throws his arms around her middle and his entire body is drumming against her, his belly and muscles, his face in the dip between her breasts as if he wanted to burrow into her, hide, and she will remember his face, there, so cold she feels it through her dress—remember just a few hours later when his father will cling to her, howling, his body, too, drumming against her.
Chapter 22
WE’LL BE THE first school in the district to announce our plans for celebrating the Führer’s birthday,” Sister Mäuschen is saying when Thekla rushes into the faculty meeting.
“I’m sorry I’m late.” She raises her right arm, still shaken from what just happened with Bruno. “Heil Hitler.”
The sisters and teachers around the library table raise their right arms. “Heil Hitler.”
“One of my students had a problem and needed—”
“Sit down, please.” Sister Josefine leans toward Sister Mäuschen. “But his birthday is still two months away.”
“May I please remind you of the Führer’s last birthday?” asks Sister Mäuschen, usually so shy she nibbles her words before anyone can hear. But whenever she mentions the Führer, her voice fills out. “That’s when Dr. Goebbels told us how destiny chose the Führer from the masses because of his purity and his brilliance. God gave him this honorary post in history so the whole world can celebrate him.” Sister Mäuschen swallows. Tucks her chapped hands into her sleeves, relapsing into the obedient little mouse. She used to be a spirited child, so stubborn about not liking shoes that she’d bury them whenever her mother made her wear them.
“Every one of our students should memorize the Führer’s poem about his mother. ‘Mutter’ is the title.” As Sister Mäuschen recites it, her voice deepens into that of a man rhapsodizing about his mother’s beloved devoted eyes: wenn ihre lieben treuen Augen nicht mehr wie einst ins Leben sehn; about his mother’s feet, which have grown tired and don’t want to carry her anymore while she walks: wenn ihre müd’ gewordnen Füsse sie nicht mehr tragen woll’n beim Gehn—
Do his mother’s eyes go first? Thekla wonders. Or her feet?
Across the table from her, the school nurse, Sister Agathe, is doing her best not to laugh by pressing her thumbs into the corners of her mouth to keep it level. Her little face, tucked inside her wimple and veil, is bright pink.
“. . . ending with the harsh hour,” Sister Mäuschen continues, “when his mother’s mouth no longer asks him for anything: die Stunde kommt, die bittre Stunde, da dich ihr Mund nach nichts mehr frägt.
*
A bad poet, Thekla thinks. He failed as a painter. Tried to write opera, wanting to be another Wagner. And now these congested rhymes that would have never made it into the Echtermeyer collection. In art, sentimentality is not only insincere but unforgivable.
Why doesn’t Sister Josefine say anything? She knows good poetry. Is she afraid of Sister Mäuschen? What would Sister Mäuschen say if she knew Thekla still has Fräulein Siderova’s Echtermeyer? Last fall, when the list of banned books kept growing, Thekla thought it unwise to keep the poetry collection on her school desk. She carried it home, planning to bring it to Fräulein Siderova. A reason to visit. But she was afraid she’d intrude. Yet, the longer she waited, the more she imagined conversations with her teacher.
Better make a book cover for the Echtermeyer from butcher paper or conceal it inside the linen book jacket her mother embroidered. By now the black list has almost three thousand titles. Vera Inber’s works are on that list. Lion Feuchtwanger’s. Heinrich Mann’s. Stefan Zweig’s. Kurt Tucholsky’s. But there are enough other German poets whose books are not banned. Goethe is magnificent and a safe choice. So is Annette von Droste-Hülshoff. Theodor Storm, too. And definitely Friedrich von Schiller.
I can do this as long as they let me teach. Stretching into this—I can do this—Thekla looks straight at Sister Mäuschen. “I appreciate your focus on Mother’s Day,” she says, “because I’ve already considered my lesson plan.” She has not thought of a lesson plan, much less of the Führer’s birthday, but then the word consider can be intended to mean the possibility of thought.
“So what is it you are considering?” Fräulein Buttgereit asks her, mouth set in the familiar lines of disappointment that square her chin. Her parents won’t let her get engaged to the driver of the bakery truck, Alfred Meyer, who’s courted her for years without having one moment alone with her.
“In the weeks leading up to Muttertag,” Thekla answers, “my students and I will collect early spring flowers and—”
“My goal, all along,” Fräulein Buttgereit interrupts, “has been to impress on my students how the Führer loves them.”
Pathetic, Thekla thinks. That’s why boys like Bruno think they can’t live without him. “My goal,” she says, “is to make the theme of the German Mutter the focus of all subjects: history, geography, art . . . including botany and handwriting.”
*
She’s making up details as she talks, before any of the other teachers can. If she has to, she can be more patriotic than any of them. She knows what they say about her—that she’s ambitious—but if they’d waited ten years for a teaching job, they’d be ambitious, too.
Still, no one is more ambitious than Sister Josefine. Especially when it comes to self-denial. Austerity has been seductive for the sister, the Spartan training of her body rewarding her with ascetic zeal. And yet, her healthy teeth betray her privileged upbringing. Winning, people say about her, she is good at winning. Riding in competitions as a young woman. As girls, Thekla and her classmates whispered that Sister Josefine lost her hymen bouncing on a horse. Already they could tell that nuns had more power than married women.
“Each student,” Thekla says to Sister Mäuschen, “will compose a poem for his Mutter and copy it in his best handwriting, and—”
“Excellent idea, Fräulein Jansen.”
But Sister Josefine watches quietly, gauging what’s real and what’s politics for the new teacher, who’s intelligent but self-indulgent. That silk scarf of hers . . . tied so low that her clavicle shows. Vain. But at least in good taste.
“—and he’ll decorate the poem with pressed flowers from our botany lesson,” Thekla Jansen continues and thinks of pressing flowers with Fräulein Siderova. Remember that hike to the flour mill, Fräulein? You took us across fields toward the faraway sun that burned through the mist yellow-white as we collected flowers to press for our bookmarks. Teichrosen glistened on the pond’s flatness, and around its bank Löwenzähnchen—snapdragons and Hahnenfuss—buttercups crowded each other. In the grass the blue of forget-me-nots. Birds gaudy in elderberry trees, in apple trees, twitter and bloom everywhere. Meadows. And then the brick arches of the flour mill. Purple thistles. An anthill. Under the umbrella leaves of the Holunder we settled down with you. That fox we saw—sleek and red and low; then another, smaller; another yet. And bees, diving into petals and emerging covered with yellow dust.
Always, that solace in nature. That’s what Thekla wants for her boys, too. Suddenly she has an idea. This afternoon she’ll take them to the Rhein for their lessons, even if the rain picks up again. They’ll be excited, eager to be outdoors. Already, she can feel that sensation of walking in the rain, face tilted up, clothes molded to her. But that was summer rain. She smiles to herself.
Sister Mäuschen smiles back as if waiting to hear more.
*
Gisela Stosick has stood outside the school for ten minutes, shivering in the damp wind while students spilled from the double door, greeting her, “Guten Tag, Frau Stosick,” as they headed home. Her feet are
cold despite her new ankle boots, embossed leather the color of cognac. It makes her sad that most of these students don’t own boots, just shoes, worn shoes. Her son has two pairs of shoes and two pairs of boots. Good quality and waterproofed. Not every child is that lucky.
If she had more children, she wouldn’t be able to buy Bruno new boots whenever he needed them. She and Günther certainly wanted more. “God’s will,” Herr Pastor Schüler consoled her, while she dreamed of strangling God. Three times she imagined yanking God from his throne in his heaven, once for each child pulled dead from her womb. Until she had Bruno and it would have been foolish to provoke God.
When Gisela goes inside the school to find Bruno, his classroom is empty. Briefly, she lays one flat hand against the top of the desk—smooth from centuries of children’s hands—where she sat as a girl, right behind Thekla Jansen, who used to be Fräulein Siderova’s favorite. Knowing all the answers. Volunteering to clean the chalkboard.
Thekla will know where Bruno is.
Gisela goes to find her in the teachers’ lounge, knocks at the door, knocks again, and opens it halfway. “I’m sorry to interrupt. I’m searching for Bruno. Oh—Heil Hitler.”
“Heil Hitler,” Sister Mäuschen says.
“Bruno went home,” Thekla Jansen says. “He stayed behind for a little while after the other boys left, but then he went home, too.”
*
But Gisela Stosick is already retreating, closing the door quietly. The rain has let up, and the sky is getting lighter. As she rushes home, she tells herself Bruno must have sneaked out the back of the school to avoid the embarrassment of his mother waiting for him. Her independent boy who used to walk home by himself. She must talk with Günther, remind him how happy it made Bruno to see her once he got home, how he’d tell her and his father about his morning while they ate lunch. She misses how it used to be.
She has no doubts about protecting her son from Hitler’s propaganda, but she’s not all that sure, anymore, if keeping him out of the Hitler-Jugend is best for him. It makes him even more different than other boys. He’s bright and shy, the target of bullies. Some of her friends think she’s foolish. They say the regime will spin itself out.
The instant she enters her house through the side door, she hears something falling in the living room.
“Bruno?”
He must have arrived home before her. Again, she calls his name. Opens the door to the living room partway. No one there. And it was more like a bumping sound than a fall, really.
In the kitchen, she mashes boiled potatoes and apples, Himmel und Erde—heaven and earth, a good winter dish, potatoes from the Weinharts’ delivery last fall and apples she and Bruno picked at the little orchard in Krefeld. She stores them in her cellar on shelves lined with newspapers, and they’re a bit puckered by now; still, they taste fresh whenever she stirs them together, Himmel und Erde, mingling the flavors of what was grown close to heaven and in the earth.
*
“My students already memorize one poem each week,” Thekla says. “Poems appropriate to the seasons . . . poems about loss or celebration . . . and they write their own, about a person or a pet they love. I plan to expand on that by leading my boys into a discussion of poems about their mothers.”
Sister Mäuschen nods, pleased.
So far, Thekla feels, she’s been navigating through the meeting quite well. She says, “That discussion is bound to generate goodwill because my students will tell their parents and their group leaders. Scholastically it’ll inspire them to talk about their own Mutter.”
“It’s our responsibility as teachers,” Sister Josefine says, “to respect that creative urge in each child, to do all we can to let it unfold. Are there any other suggestions?” She glances around, at her sisters and teachers.
Most don’t care for the government and are appropriately discreet; but a few are outdoing one another with how they’ll incorporate the Führer and his poetry into their lesson plans.
To impress her principal, Fräulein Talmeister talks about turnen—exercising with the children. Everyone knows Sister Josefine supports the government’s rigorous training that wipes out laziness in the souls of the young. “Physical exercise,” Fräulein Tal-meister starts, “used to be perceived as being just for the individual . . . the strengthening of the body, the habit of discipline. But I’ve realized that this is selfish.” She fusses with the sailor collar of her striped blouse. “The Führer teaches us that exercise is our duty for our country.”
Exercising for the Führer. Really. Thekla wants to laugh but keeps her face impassive. She can stay outside all of that. But just then she remembers the rally when, just for an instant, she felt part of it. Like touching a flame but getting burned instead and feeling tricked. Though she shook herself free from that spell and returned to who she believed she was, she felt agitated for days. But if she has to, she’ll tell her students that the Führer wants them to exercise more. If that makes their lives easier while the regime lasts. But bad poetry? Never.
“The body is a temple of the Holy Spirit,” Sister Mäuschen says enthusiastically. “We must prepare our students to be able-bodied citizens and soldiers who’ll sacrifice for the Vaterland.”
*
But Sister Josefine is not about to speak of children as soldiers. She brings the discussion back to what matters, the teaching.
“During my art lesson,” Thekla says, “my students will learn how to make bookmarks from their poems and the flowers they picked. We’ll wrap each bookmark in tissue paper and weigh it down with books. After a day or two, we’ll use a clear sealer. I still have a bookmark I made here as a girl.”
Sudden winds bend the treetops outside the window. Then it is calm again, with the sky almost white and the trees black sticks against that white sky. She wonders how Bruno is.
“I like to combine all subjects within the process of learning,” Thekla continues. “Biology and music and literature and mathematics. All at once. So that the connections between the subjects become as significant as the subjects themselves.”
I wish I could tell them that this is your philosophy, Fräulein Siderova, but that would be foolish. It’s best for our students that I continue your way of teaching.
“That unity in teaching,” Sister Mäuschen says, “is exactly what the Führer wants from us as educators.”
Thekla opens her lips, stunned. How dare Sister twist what she said to validate the Führer’s ideas about education? His grammar in Mein Kampf is atrocious, a poor example for students. No excuse that he wrote it in prison.
Sister Mäuschen is waiting.
Thekla wonders if saying nothing means she’s expected to say yes to everything from now on. Shouldn’t you be safe going along with the nuns, your conscience and all taken care of? No. I didn’t start any of this. Once the regime wears itself down, I’ll get back to my own moral compass, to who I was before. And I’ll lobby for you to come back and teach, Fräulein Siderova. As soon as you enter my—
As soon as you enter our classroom, you notice what I’ve changed to advance our boys, and what I’ve kept unchanged to honor you.
“The position is yours again,” I tell you.
“I can’t take this from you.”
But I insist. “You’re not taking anything from me. It has always been yours.”
“But what about you, Thekla? What will you do?”
“I’ve been offered another position . . . as assistant principal.”
“Where?”
In Oberkassel—No. Neuss? Why not here in Burgdorf, at this school where I can look after you? “Right here in Burgdorf,” I tell you.
You tell me I’m gracious. “Very gracious,” you say.
Chapter 23
WHEN THEY GET READY to leave the schoolhouse, Monika Buttgereit buttons her plaid coat. As usual, she’s wearing too many colors. Vulgar. Her family’s house is like that, too, shelves and tables crammed with every item they own.
“Now she has ta
ken in a boarder,” she whispers to Thekla.
“Who?”
“Fräulein Siderova.”
“I doubt that.”
“It’s a fact. I heard about it from Trudi Montag.”
Thekla pauses. Any gossip coming through Trudi Montag is reliable. She feels oddly hurt. If she’d known Fräulein Siderova was open to boarders, she would have asked to rent from her years ago.
Fräulein Buttgereit’s eyes are bright, curious. “She can no longer afford a Putzfrau—cleaning woman.”
Putzfrau? For an instant Thekla thinks it’s her mother Monika Buttgereit is talking about. But her mother is not a Putzfrau. She’s a housekeeper. Even though she does clean the Abramowitzes’ house. But that’s just part of her job. She also cooks and irons and—
With both hands, Monika Buttgereit lifts her elaborate hat concoction and lowers it on her hair. Feathers and pom-poms.
A boarder . . . Maybe the artist who painted Fräulein Siderova’s oil portrait aboard that ship to Jerusalem is now living with her—still is her lover—and she’s only saying he’s a boarder to make it look proper. After the ship returned, he couldn’t forget you and searched for you, Fräulein Siderova. How would he have found you? By asking for the passenger list? How long ago would that have been, Fräulein Siderova? Perhaps he saw you get on a train in Düsseldorf? Not on a train, no. He didn’t see you for many years, but a few months ago the two of you met again at a gallery opening. In Düsseldorf. Where you recognized the other painting he’d done of you—yes, that’s how: he did two paintings and kept one, and when you turned, he was standing behind you and you didn’t have to speak because you knew you would always be together from now on—
*
As Thekla hastens toward her parents’ house, her shoes squeak on the snow. Tuesday lunch is always rushed because of the faculty meeting. There is a thickness to the light, and on the front steps of the pay-library, the Montags’ dog is sleeping, his fur pale gray except for his head, a mask of dark gray.