Ursula Hegi The Burgdorf Cycle Boxed Set: Floating in My Mother's Palm, Stones from the River, The Vision of Emma Blau. Children and Fire

by Hegi, Ursula

  She shouldn’t be thinking of clothes. Or other people. Only of Helmut, her husband. Husband. Hus—band. Hus —band. If you looked at it just as a word, it didn’t mean anything. Strange to think she had ever been married.

  “I miss you.”

  She said it again. “I miss you.”

  A shadow moved from a nearby grave as though she’d invoked a straying soul.

  Hilde cried out.

  “Sshh—it’s only me.” The shadow carried a tin watering can in one hand, and turned out to be the widow Weskopp, who came to the cemetery every day to tend the wide grave that held her husband and sons. Some people said she practically lived at the cemetery. “Hot days like this,” the widow said, “it’s better to water the flowers after the sun is down.”

  She pressed her watering can into the midwife’s hand, grasped her by the elbow, and guided her to the nearest faucet, where she waited while Hilde filled it with cold water.

  As Hilde tilted the can toward Helmut’s grave, silver worms of water fused her hand to the dark earth. She dropped the handle. Leapt back as the tin clattered against the stone edging of the grave.

  “Not like that.” The widow hunched over to pick up her watering can. “It’s important to water every day.” There was something watchful about her. Everyone knew she prided herself on growing the best flowers, not just in her garden and house, but also at the cemetery.

  As if those flowers could be a substitute, Hilde thought. At least I still have a son. Ashamed of her cruelty, she tried to come up with something kind she could say to the widow, who was walking along Helmut’s grave, sweeping her arm in long practiced motions to douse every last flower petal.

  Hilde tried not to look at the arc of silver worms.

  “Don’t forget the candles,” the widow continued her instructions. “It’s important to buy the right candles.” She set the watering can down and took Hilde to her family grave. “Thick, short candles.” She pointed to the flicker of light in the glass lantern that sat between two perfect rosebushes. “Some candles are too thin and tall and burn right out.”

  “I don’t have a lantern.”

  “I’ll bring you one. You also need a vase with a point at the end so it’ll stay in the ground.”

  Now I’m one of them—a widow. For an instant the midwife felt a cloying sense of comfort, but then she saw herself, forever in black, riding her bicycle to the cemetery with her very own watering can, instantly aged as she stooped over the flowers and the earth that separated her from her husband’s spoiled flesh—

  “No,” she said, “no,” unable to move as the black shape of the widow Weskopp swayed toward her as if to absorb her.

  eighteen

  1943-1945

  “I WISHED FOR HELMUT’S DEATH THE DAY I STITCHED HIS MOTHER’S blankets into a sleeping bag and watched her touch the pear tree.…”

  Trudi and Max lay in the sand pocket near the tip of the jetty, their hair wet from swimming in the river. Her head against his shoulder, she told him about the day Renate Eberhardt had been taken away. Beneath them, the sand was still warm from the sun though dusk had begun to blot the brightness from the sky, sharpening the contours of trees and rocks and freighters. Max was still naked, but Trudi had already slipped back into her dress, as always.

  “I feel sorry for the midwife. Helmut’s funeral is the only one I’ve been to where most people seemed glad to get someone beneath the ground—even people who’re all for the brown gang. We stood by his grave, but I bet we all were thinking of his mother. I wish you could have met Renate Eberhardt. She was one of the best-liked women in town.…”

  She raised her head toward the hollow wail from one of the Braunmeiers’ cows and listened for a moment. “I once stole from her. Pears. When I was five. Georg Weiler and I, we sneaked into her garden, and when she came out of the house, Georg ran off and I was caught. She was pregnant with Helmut then.”

  Linking one hand through hers, Max rested the knot of their fingers on her stomach.

  Trudi felt the warmth through her linen dress and shivered with pleasure. “You know what she did? She gave me two pears, and a few weeks later she came into the pay-library with her new baby and brought me another pear.”

  Warm wind carried the scent of camomile from the dike. Max raised himself on one arm and swung his body across Trudi’s, keeping himself light above her on his elbows. He had taken off his glasses, and the pale skin around his eyes was in stark contrast to his tan. She pulled him close, let him block the first stars as she caressed his naked back. Her fingers circled the ring of hairs that grew low on his spine. She loved touching that ring of hairs—it was silky, and even though she couldn’t see it now, she knew the exact pattern the hairs formed, an oval swirl like the crown of a small child’s head. It filled her with wonder to know another person’s body so completely—by touch and taste and smell and sound and sight—know it with a delight that had begun to carry over into an enjoyment of her own body.

  “You …” Max sighed. “You’re as vast as the night sky … as mysterious as a veiled moon.…”

  She laughed in his arms, intrigued. “So that’s how you see me?”

  “Your energy…” he murmured, “it’s so great that sometimes I feel it will suck me up right there into the sky with you.”

  “There could be worse fates.”

  “Oh, yes.” He tickled her nose with his mustache, then kissed her fully. “Much worse. Like never having met you.”

  “Let me look at you.” She made him move till she could see his features in the half-light. Sometimes she thought he was becoming more handsome in front of her eyes, but of course that was impossible. He must have been like this the day she’d met him, and she simply hadn’t seen how extraordinary his face was. It looked extraordinary even when Max was troubled—as he had been for much of this last month, ever since he’d been drafted to work in the office of an ammunition factory. His bad eyesight had kept him out of the battle, but not out of working at a desk for the war industry, keeping records of inventories and of the foreign workers, who were heavily guarded to prevent acts of sabotage.

  Long barges rode the current, some of them lit, others nearly dark. Intermittently, one of their whistles would slice the night, resonant and sad.

  Max sat up. “Let’s go away, you and I.”

  “On a vacation?”

  “Leave for good. Where do you want to go?”

  “China,” she said without hesitation and knelt in the sand so that her face was at the same height as his.

  He laughed. “For real.”

  “China. One: I can travel there for almost free—”

  “So you’ve told me.”

  “And two: it’s far away from Germany.”

  “A good reason.” He wiped a few grains of sand from her temple. “But until we can afford China, we better think of a place that isn’t quite that far. I wish we could live in France. There’s a chapel I want to show you. In a village not far from Paris. Inside is a marble plate with an inscription that says the chapel was built during the First World War by French peasants, who promised God to build a chapel if the Germans didn’t win. Being German, I felt odd, reading the inscription. Now I hope there’ll be a second chapel for this war.”

  “I’d help them build it,” Trudi said.

  “You’d like Paris. When I was there in 1934, I saw a ballet dancer in front of Notre Dame.…” As he described her—the short red shift and black stockings—Trudi could see her, dancing as if she were on the most famous stage in the world. Hundreds of people stood watching her, and toward the end of her dance, she drew a man into the circle … a clown, who started off stumbling and awkward. But soon he was dancing with her as if she’d transformed him.

  “Things like that can only happen in Paris,” Max said.

  Trudi smiled to herself. “Oh—I think they can happen everywhere.”

  “We’ll live in Montmartre. I could paint there.”

  “And what will I do?�
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  “Tell stories … have babies … dance with me …”

  She found herself reeling in the smell of the earth, the smell of the river. A child of her own … And yet, how could she risk bringing a child into life who might be inflicted with her size, her anguish? “About the babies? You mean that?”

  Max rubbed his face with both hands, then linked his fingers behind his head.

  “Do you?”

  “I— I don’t know why I said that.”

  She couldn’t breathe. “It doesn’t mean they’ll have bodies like mine.”

  “Trudi—”

  “A Zwerg can have regular-size babies.”

  “I don’t doubt that. It’s just that…”

  “What? What?”

  “I don’t know if I want children.”

  “Then why say that about babies?”

  “I don’t know,” he said miserably.

  She sat back on her heels, stared past him.

  “Please—don’t be like that, Trudi.”

  “Like what?” She spread her short arms. “This is me. The way I was born—like that. A Zwerg. Do you have any idea how much I hate that word? Zwerg… There—take a good look, Max Rudnick.”

  “You know I didn’t mean your body.”

  “Well, it is me.”

  “Part of you. And you use it well… as a shield, a weapon. It’s your way of fighting. Your strength and your weakness.”

  She shook her head, furious at him for being right.

  “You get angry when others dare to look at you. Yet, I’ve never known anyone who watches people as acutely as you.” Words charged from him as though he’d restrained them too long: “You—you misunderstand things. You take everything so—so seriously. When people laugh, you’re sure they must be laughing at you.…”

  The air was still around her. As if the world had stopped moving. This is the end, she thought. Our last time together. I will never see him again. And that’s good. If this is how he really feels about me—

  “You make it awfully hard for others to be close to you.”

  “Then why—the hell—do you bother?” She felt the heat in her eyes that would surely turn into tears if she didn’t get away from him.

  “Because—” He caught her by the wrist as she scrambled up. “—I happen to love you.”

  She yanked her arm from him. “One moment you say you love me, and the next moment you tell me that I misunderstand things and that I won’t let you be close.… Make up your mind. Which of them is it?”

  “All of them.” He crouched in front of her, naked, his eyes close to hers. “And not always at the same time. Trudi…” He laid his hands on her shoulders, shook her gently. “Trudi, what is it you want me to know? That you’re not different from anyone else inside? You’ve taught me that already.”

  The heat sprang from her eyes, doused her face.

  “Come here.” He drew her close. “Do you believe that I love you?”

  She sniffled. Nodded. Said, “Yes.”

  He tightened his arms around her. “How can we think about babies in the middle of death? Sometimes I get so afraid that I won’t be alive by the end of the day. Working in that Goddamn factory—all I think of is running away.”

  She stroked his face.

  “Maybe after the war, Trudi. If we survive …”

  “We will,” she said fiercely.

  He rested his head on top of her hair. “Somehow I don’t have much faith in getting out of this alive.”

  “We both will.”

  “If we do—maybe we can talk about babies then.” She didn’t move.

  He brought one hand under her chin and tilted her face up. “Look at you. You’re all wet.” With his hands, he wiped off her tears. “So then—you’re glad you got me?”

  She had to grin. “Sometimes.”

  “Even if I don’t always know what I want?”

  “Even if.”

  All at once the muscles in his chest twitched. “Sshh—” He raised one hand.

  “What is it?”

  “I hear something.”

  They listened, hard.

  It was a voice, a man’s voice, calling her name. Twice.

  “My father.” She smoothed her skirt.

  Max grabbed his clothes, struggled into them, stepped into his shoes without tying the laces and was on the bicycle, pedaling away from her, before she heard her father’s voice again.

  “Trudi…”

  She waited until she could no longer see Max. “Here,” she called, and walked toward the voice.

  Her father was halfway down the path from the dike to the river.

  “A postcard.” He was out of breath. “From Zürich. No words—just a drawing. Of a cat and a train.”

  “Thank God.” She grabbed his hands. “Konrad—They’re safe.”

  “Trudi!” Someone came running from the direction where Max’s bicycle had disappeared.

  Max, she thought, but the shape was shorter, wider.

  “Trudi—Are you all right, Trudi?” It was the butcher’s son, Anton, who was home on leave. “I tried to catch the man, but he got away on his bicycle. Was he bothering you?”

  “No,” Trudi said, “No. What man?”

  “The one without clothes. I was fishing and heard someone call your name and then I saw him on the jetty with you and—”

  “Oh, that man.”

  Anton stared at her.

  “He was just asking me to watch his clothes. You see—” She felt her father’s eyes on her face. “He wanted to take a swim and worried about someone stealing his clothes. So he asked me if I could watch them.”

  “And you believed him?”

  She raised her face toward the butcher’s son and nodded like an obedient child. “It’s such a warm evening. I could see how someone might want to swim.”

  “He took his clothes off in front of you?”

  “I wasn’t looking.”

  “Don’t you see what kind of danger you were in? We should call the police.” He seemed ready to run into town and bring out a search party.

  “Anton—” She reached up and laid her hand on his arm. “I’m sure he just wanted to swim.”

  “What else did he say?”

  She glanced at her father, then back at the young Anton Immers. “Let me think,” she said, stalling him. Konrad is safe in Switzerland, something within her sang, Konrad is safe.

  “Did he ask you to take off your clothes?”

  She made her voice go indignant. “I only swim when I have my bathing suit. All he asked me was if the river was dangerous, and I said it wasn’t. Not if you stay close to shore.”

  “Are you sure he didn’t touch you?”

  “He was interested in swimming.”

  “Sometimes men will try to—”

  “I told him to watch out for whirlpools and to stay away from the barges.”

  “That’s not all he should stay away from.”

  “He was only here a few minutes. He didn’t even have time to go into the water.”

  “Then why did he run off like that?”

  “He didn’t say.” She wished she’d thought of a better answer.

  Her father stepped between her and Anton Immers. “Thank you for your concern. I’ll take care of this matter now. No need for you to—”

  “But make your daughter understand the danger she was in.”

  Trudi felt furious. She wanted to shout at him that she had just made love, that she would move to Paris, where she’d never have to look at another Immers face again.

  “Herr Montag, that man could have raped your daughter.”

  “I will speak with my daughter,” her father assured Anton Immers. “Come now,” he said to her, “time to get you home.”

  They didn’t talk until they reached the dike. “Tomorrow everyone will be gossiping about this,” she moaned.

  “At least it’s a pretty good story,” her father said. “I’m sure Anton believed it.… You are all right?” />
  “Of course.” She waited for him to ask her about Max, ready to answer with the truth.

  “I’m so glad for Konrad and his mother,” he said.

  “It gives me hope. For all of us.”

  He glanced at her from the side. “And about your friend Herr Rudnick … Tell him he doesn’t have to hide from me.”

  The coat of the Russian soldier still hung on the coat tree in the hallway that connected the pay-library and the Montags’ living quarters, and Trudi would keep it there as if—the old women in Burgdorf became fond of saying—she expected a man to come home to her. There had been that one incident by the river, after all, which had caused all of them to reassess this Zwerg woman, who usually gossiped about them.

  No doubt her inexperience with men had led her to be less than properly cautious with this stranger who’d presented himself to her late one August evening by the river and had asked her—so the rumor went—to watch his clothes for him while he swam.

  “The nerve …” people said and agreed that the man’s boldness was nothing compared to Trudi Montag’s naïveté.

  “When it comes to men, Trudi Montag is like a child,” people said, shaking their heads.

  The naked man was a foreigner, some of the people suspected, while others insisted he was one of the Jews hiding out. What they concluded was two things: that he was not one of them, and that Trudi Montag could have gotten herself raped or killed. Fortunately—so the story passed through town—Trudi’s father and young Anton Immers had arrived at the river in time to chase the naked man away.

  “He already had his clothes off,” Frau Weiler said.

  “And Trudi just stayed there.” Herr Blau clicked his teeth.