by Ursula Hegi
* * *
As a child, Tilli played with chunks of amber she and her twin gathered along the Baltic Sea. You can tell amber from other stones: it makes sparks when you rub it against your clothes, and it makes the hairs on your arms stand up. At home, they line up their treasures on the windowsills with amber their mother collected as a child, the biggest a quarter-pound. Together, they study each find, fascinated by tiny animals trapped in golden resin from pine trees—a beetle or a worm or a spider still in its web—so lifelike that any moment they may crawl again.
“Relics,” Alfred says.
Their mother wears her favorite amber on a ribbon around her neck. To keep it shiny, her mother polishes it with her spit. One edge chipped after it was smoothed by the sea, but inside the green moth levitates, unharmed.
“Insects,” she teaches her twins, “are lured by the smell of resin that will trap them, preserve them for millions of years. Since amber is heavier than water, it drifts along the floor of the seas with the currents until a high tide throws it ashore.”
In the Stone Age, Tilli and Alfred learn, humans used amber for trade and for ornaments. And for healing. Worn in a pouch near your pain, amber cures toothaches and bellyaches. If you rub Bernstein across a snakebite, it nullifies the poison; and if you lay amber on the collarbone of a pregnant woman, she’ll confess her secret the moment she wakes up.
* * *
“Here now here…” Sister tugs at Tilli’s nipple.
Tilli flinches.
“For the baby.” Sister tugs Tilli’s nipple into the baby’s mouth.
Thin and sharp and fast like an arrow shot from inside tracking the trajectory of need.
Then a tingling, a stinging as her milk trickles to him, sticky and yellow.
“Vormilch,” Sister Franziska says. “He won’t get much from you this first time. Just a few drops.”
Vormilch. Milk that comes before milk. Other Girls had Vormilch before Sister Franziska bound their breasts and brewed sage tea. Tilli stifles a sob of release when the baby sucks right away and his shrieks dwindle to sniffles at her nipple that fits him and unfurls his belly. He fills her arms, four times as heavy as her own girl.
She sees her mother lifting the ribbon with her amber moth amulet to Tilli’s neck. Saying, “Let me see how this looks on you.” But her mother’s hands tremble, and Tilli instinctively steps from the circle of ribbon—why? why then?—before the amulet can graze her skin. When it slips from the ribbon to the floor, Tilli’s mother laughs uneasily, such dread in her eyes, recognizing what Tilli can’t begin to understand though she lives on a farm.
From then on wrestling becomes a secret. Still, twice they get caught. Thrashed with the carpet beater. Locked into separate places: cellar and stable.
The morning their father saddles two horses and rides off with Alfred to board him with a farmer two hours away—Work him hard, he demands—their mother takes Tilli to the midwife’s house.
In the kitchen she makes Tilli lie on the table and presses one ear against her belly. “Pull her legs apart.”
“She can’t be pregnant,” cries Tilli’s mother.
“Wider.”
“She’s only eleven.”
“I had another eleven-year-old,” the midwife whispers. “Barely survived. The baby didn’t.”
Her mother’s hand on Tilli’s belly. A fish leaping oh—
* * *
Sister Franziska straightens the mother’s legs on the bed. Lowers her head to the pillow. But the mother spins her face toward Tilli. Streaks of silt on her neck and arms. Eyes like cracked glass. “You are a child—”
“She’s the only one with milk.” Sister Franziska kneels and brings her arms around the mother’s shoulders. “Lie down now.”
“Don’t you have someone older?”
“Veronika. But her milk has almost dried up. I won’t make her start over again.”
“How old?”
“Sixteen.”
“No, no—this child.”
“Eleven.”
“This is so very wrong.”
Tilli kisses the little boy. Too late, the Sisters said. Except now Tilli suspects why they haven’t let her nurse her own girl—because of this … this odd and sweet fusion of a baby’s mouth with your nipple that sets your body alight, stuns you with foreknowledge—more potent than memory—that he’ll be the last child to ever drink from you.
Think how much stronger this would be with my own.
Too late—
Think of all the children who are never chosen.
* * *
“We can tell people the child is mine,” her mother whispered. “Raise it as ours—”
“You don’t want that,” her father whispered.
“Some women raise—”
“If it came from anyone other than Alfred.”
“It’s family.”
“Too much so. What if it has a clubfoot? A harelip? Water on the brain—”
Tilli’s mother covers her eyes.
And Tilli becomes invisible. So invisible her parents no longer bother to whisper.
“And what if we raised it—what then? She’ll have more bastards … maybe one without a face.”
Without a face? Tilli can’t breathe.
“We never saw that one,” says her mother.
“Others saw. And those parents are just cousins. Brother and sister is worse.”
“A sin.”
Once they name it, sin takes root. Spreads. Blends their voices.
“The worst of all sins.”
“They must have known.”
“They’ve seen dogs hump. Horses.”
“Held a heifer ready to be mounted.”
“Those two cannot stay away from each other.”
“It’s rather that she won’t stay away.”
“We don’t know that for sure.”
“If we send her away he’ll take his seed elsewhere.”
* * *
Sister shifts the baby to Tilli’s other breast.
“How old?” Tilli whispers.
“Eight months.”
Eight months.
Two hundred forty days.
Two hundred forty times as old as my own girl.
Tilli misses her brother. Misses the habit of knowing he’s close by. He doesn’t have that either, knowing she’s close by. Itching in her palms circles her fingers, circles her palms to the backs of her hands as it does after she eats chicken, even just a few shreds in the soup last night. The baby’s pudgy hands pat her breasts.
“I’ll pray with you, Frau Jansen.” Sister Franziska nudges her rosary at the toymaker’s wife who twists her fingers into a knot that won’t let the rosary in. Tilli wants to snatch it, hide it, especially when Sister drapes it around the mother’s wrists.
I’ll steal the rosary, Tilli promises the mother silently. I will.
Downstairs the voices of the priest and the toymaker. The toymaker’s voice listless, not exuberant like yesterday at the Zirkus when Tilli saw him with his arm around his wife. A pretty man. Dangerous to marry a man prettier than you. Every girl knows that. But the toymaker’s wife felt pretty. Tilli could tell by the way she stood so close to her husband with this baby they made together balanced on her hip. For everyone to see. Two girls and a boy tug at them; the girls dark-haired like their father, the boy fair like his mother and baby brother. When the parents smile at each other, Tilli wishes they were hers. Parents like that follow their children to the concession stand, where the father buys little sticks with honeyed nuts for the three oldest, tickling beneath their chins to make them giggle. Parents like that keep their children close by.
* * *
“A birthing clinic,” Tilli’s mother said. “For girls like you.”
Her father said, “You leave tomorrow. On the train.”
“When can I come home?”
Tilli’s mother won’t look at her. Her face is gray.
“Two trains and a ferry,” says her
father.
“He’ll travel with you,” says her mother.
Dawn. And her mother with her arms down her sides. Stiff arms. Arms too heavy to lift when Tilli embraces her.
“Mutti—” she screams. “Mutti—”
Her mother motions to the food she’s packed.
Hanover to Hamburg: Her father sits across from Tilli, one leg stretched across the aisle so she can’t run away.
Hamburg to Husum: His eyes are half-closed, and it comes to her that he’s ashamed of her.
Husum to Nordstrand: He won’t speak to her until he walks her onto the ferry. “I want to be clear about this. You cannot come home.”
“Never?”
“You must never contact us.”
“But I’ll give it away, the baby. I’ll—”
“We cannot trust you with your brother.”
“No one needs to know—”
“Nuns will pick you up on the other side.” He strides off the ferry, holds up both palms to stop her.
On the dock he waits till the ferry is out too far for her to swim back without drowning.
Nothing out there. Nothing outside my body that is mine. And with that Tilli’s insides clench around the baby. It’s all I have.
Her first night in the long dormitory of the St. Margaret Home the moon keeps her awake; she cries without sound, pretends to sleep while other Girls practice dance steps in their long nightgowns. But they won’t let her pretend. Tug her from her bed and into their circle, warn that dancing can get you big. Dancing with men, that is. Two have taken lessons at a Tanzschule—dance school—and show Tilli how to waltz and polka. They don’t know that the Sisters can hear them dance and are glad for that brief joy. None of the Girls are from Nordstrand. To take a pregnant daughter to a home nearby invites gossip, shame for generations to come. Instead, a daughter is sent away—as far as a family can afford—to shed all evidence of her sin and return home if her parents let her as if nothing happened during this long interruption of her life.
In class the Girls throw blackboard erasers at each other till puffs of chalk swirl and settle on Sisters’ habits; but their disobedience stirs Tilli, inspires her. She helps Veronika stitch the ends of sleeves shut and giggles when other Girls’ arms get stuck. Lies are not lies, Veronika says, if they have to do with pranks. Then they don’t need to be confessed.
6
Some Join the Zirkus When There’s Nothing Left
Two days after the wave, Kalle Jansen approaches the Ludwigs about employment.
“Any woodwork. New or repairs.”
“The wagon panels,” says Silvio Ludwig.
“Ja,” his father says, “but—”
“Sick animals … I can make them well.”
“—but your wife needs you.”
“Not anymore.”
Some join the Zirkus when there’s nothing left, and the toymaker’s reasons they understand because they, too, searched for his children and have seen him and Lotte comb the edge of the sea, heading in opposite directions.
“I’m good with sick animals,” he says quietly.
Silvio Ludwig lays both hands on Kalle’s shoulders. “We know you’re a skilled worker.”
“Skilled and strong,” Herr Ludwig agrees. “If you still want to work for us next year, you can.”
But the following day the toymaker is back, and the Ludwigs can see he’s determined to get away from Nordstrand.
“If not with us, then with another Zirkus.”
“We can’t afford to miss out.”
They shake hands with him, Herr Ludwig squeezing hard to prove his strength because he is weakening. Some nights he startles himself awake, terrified he’ll cry if he closes his eyes. But when he must cry, he does so quietly, afraid of waking his son. Most of all, Herr Ludwig is afraid of being afraid.
* * *
Friday morning Kalle wraps his carving tools into layers of flannel. In the kitchen Lotte sews an antler button back on Martin’s cardigan. She’s been like that for days: washing and mending the clothes of their children.
“I can’t stay,” he whispers.
“When will you be back?”
“I— I don’t know.”
She yanks the needle through a hole in the button, through the knitting, yanks the needle up through the other hole, across the antler button, down into the first hole. It’s dim in the kitchen where the windows face the slope of the dike.
“The Ludwigs hired me to travel with them.”
She slips off her thimble. Bites off the thread.
He winces. “Bad for your teeth. You know that it can do more damage than cracking a walnut.”
She jabs the needle into the pincushion. “Coward.” Her voice is eerily calm.
But he feels her screaming inside and wishes she would scream at him, strike and kick him though they’ve never inflicted pain on each other. “It may be easier for you if I’m gone.”
“Easier for me? Don’t you lie to me.”
“I’m not lying.”
She folds Martin’s cardigan. Flattens the wool with her fingertips. Unfolds the cardigan.
Kalle needs to get away from her. But won’t it be rude to turn his back?
“It’s a lie to say you’re doing this for me. You coward.”
He takes one long step backward and it’s like trying to reach ground from the third rung of a ladder. Another step. And another. Until he feels the door behind him.
“Be gone then,” she whispers.
* * *
Outside the farmhouse, his dogs lie curled around each other, twitching in their sleep. He gages the mood of the Nordsee: chalky like laundry water; sky steel-gray. Mist swishes across the flats, a thousand tiny feet, curves up the dike making him feel he’s walking on unsteady land that can betray him.
From that mist a black sail emerges, coasts along the crest of the dike: Sister Elinor on the convent bicycle. Chasing after her is Verrückter Hund. Crazy Dog. That’s what the Sisters yell after him with much affection, “Verrückter Hund!” Long legs on a short frame. Fur that matches the Sisters’ habits and wimple: black except for white on the throat and forehead.
Sister Elinor is the oldest of the Sisters, but her body is the most agile. She relishes the strength in her thighs, the exquisite pressure of the seat.
When she waves to the toymaker, the bicycle wobbles, and he drops his bundle, sprints up the dike. Wolf-like with his powerful legs and ice-blue eyes. Like the eyes of the Alaskan wolf on her holy card of the Alaskan saint who journeyed up and down the biggest river in Alaska—the name, what is the name of that river? The toymaker grips Sister’s bicycle, one hand on the frame, one against the back of the saddle, braces her with his body. Heat bolts from her toes through her knees and up, barely contained by the folds of her habit, a heat that makes her hem ripple. If people knew what bliss nuns can feel, they’d find us less mystifying.
“Would you like to rest, Sister?”
She remembers the name of the river. “Yukon.”
“Yukon?” He looks a bit gewöhnlich—common—with his fleshy lips and beard stubble.
“Your children inhabit my prayers.”
He stares at the ground. Tries to swallow. “Thank you, Sister.”
“I used to be a ballerina. As a girl. As a young woman.” She tries to stop talking but her voice gets faster. “I danced on four different stages. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be prideful, but I was adored, admired. I was born New Year’s Eve of the past century. Seventeen ninety-nine. If only it had been four hours later, during the first hours of the new century…”
The toymaker raises his black eyebrows, one unbroken line.
“I have been staring at you,” she says. “I must get home.”
“Would you like me to walk with you?”
That damn heat throughout her body again. “Oh no.” Sister Elinor climbs on the bicycle and pedals away from him, past the thatched roof of the beekeeper, past three other farms, past the church, and the Zir
kus wagons in the meadow of the St. Margaret Home, pedals hard, reminding herself to pray. Pray for the toymaker’s wife. Pray for the big-bellied Girls. Pray for those who believe they can tame the sea. Such hubris. They only provoke retribution; must relinquish more than they seized. Not only with the sea but with all that makes them grasp for more.
Including lust.
Including God.
Past the sheep and the stench of sheep Sister Elinor pedals. Fur and grass and shit—something satisfying about that smell. Two old sheep kneel on their bent front legs, muzzles to the earth, ripping and chewing and worshipping while the Holy Spirit breathes into all that exists. You don’t see the Spirit, only His handiwork: these lines of trees bent forever to one side; these sheep on their knees; these geese flying low above the Nordsee.
* * *
The toymaker arrives while we’re packing to leave Nordstrand. Smudges of gray beneath his eyes. Right away he helps load and secure our wagons—we don’t have to tell him. He notices what needs to be done.
When he rips the front of his shirt, I offer to mend it for him.
“No, thank you.” He smells of new wood and new sweat.
I can tell he’s accustomed to being settled because he carries displacement in the slope of his shoulders. “I repair clothes for everyone here.” In my wagon I slip a needle from my pincushion. Lightly, I touch his shirt. Heat through my fingertips.
“My wife would be embarrassed … to send me off like that.”
“Did she have a choice?”
He blinks, startled.