by Hegi, Ursula
The first time Frau Tegern had come into the pay-library, Trudi had been intrigued because—aside from having the name Angelika—she looked the way Trudi had described herself in her reply to Max Rudnick’s ad. Though Frau Tegern kept to herself, Trudi gradually found out from her that her parents had died in KZs. When her father, a political prisoner, had been arrested in the late thirties, her mother had kept visiting him, even after the yellow star had to be worn. She’d refused to sew it on her coat, and she’d traveled freely, continuing her dangerous visits to her husband. But in 1945 she too had been deported and had died in Theresienstadt.
Once, when Angelika Tegern mentioned how the butcher made her uncomfortable, the way he watched her, Trudi assured her that Herr Immers looked at everyone with suspicion, even his old Nazi buddies.
“I’m going to tell you something about him,” she said and began the first of her lessons to Angelika, letting her know whom she could trust and whom to stay away from. “Not only is he a three-months baby, but he lies.”
“About what?”
“Well, essentially he’s truthful—the kind of pigheaded truth, you know?—but he lies about fighting in the First World War. He wasn’t fit to be a soldier, so he traded sausages for the taxidermist’s uniform and had himself photographed.… That briefcase he always carries with him—you’ve seen it, right?—is supposedly for gathering information about people, but his daughter-in-law swears all he has in there are newspaper clippings of the Führer.”
Trudi noticed that Frau Tegern liked to check out new books: they felt special when you cracked them open for the first time, and the pages resisted your touch—there were just the stories then, letters printed on clean paper, unencumbered by the fates of the people who would read them and whose touch would manifest itself by, say, a crease or a smudged page. Trudi began saving new deliveries for Angelika Tegern, holding them for her behind the counter before she would lend them to anyone else. She knew her customers’ tastes and would recommend books of passion or crime or adventure to them, even to those who pretended not to read them, like Klara Brocker, who wore lipstick just to go to the butcher shop in the morning and claimed to borrow romances for her invalid mother, who lived with her and her illegitimate son in their cramped apartment on Barbarossa Strasse. It was said that the old woman’s stroke was the result of her shock over Klara’s pregnancy. Never mind that the boy who’d resulted from that pregnancy was three years old and had been thoroughly enjoyed by his grandmother prior to her illness. But now her left side was paralyzed, including half of her face, and she had to be fed with a spoon. Her mask of perpetual disapproval only confirmed that she must have suffered terribly from her daughter’s indiscretion.
It struck Trudi as fitting that her customers had a choice between her stories and the published stories printed in books with gaudy paper jackets, books that were safe because they didn’t implicate anyone in town. From time to time she’d remind herself to save stories about herself for Hanna—stories which, once the girl was older, she would understand. When she thought of herself with Hanna, it became easier to separate those images from much earlier ones—of herself as a child with her mother in the earth nest—and she’d think of the first stories she had ever told, stories that had begun with a purpose: to lure her mother into the light.
Now the purpose of her stories had changed. She spun them to discover their meaning. In the telling, she found, you reached a point where you could not go back, where—as the story changed—it transformed you, too. What mattered was to let each story flow through you. It was becoming impossible to revert to her old reasons for telling stories—to get even, to prod, or to soothe. But most people didn’t know that. They were still afraid of her. They didn’t understand that now she told a story for the sake of the story, taking pleasure in how each formed within her. It still would begin by feeling drawn to secrets, but she could curb the urge to tell, let it settle into something that nurtured the fragments of life which fell into her way, until a story was ready to unveil itself.
At first Hanna didn’t know what it was she was missing, only that many mornings, upon waking, she’d be struck with a sudden sadness that made her want to crawl under her feather comforter and weep. Her mother would read to her, her father would let her play with his chess pieces, and she’d smile and hug them and wonder if this sadness perhaps meant what it was like to be a child. Not that it was with her all the time—no, she could go for days without it, but then it would find her again.
During her fourth year of life, her father kept raising the fence in the backyard because she roamed the neighborhood and was found inside people’s houses, where she’d climb in through a window, playing with a toy, say, or a set of Schnaps glasses. Sometimes she coaxed Manfred Weiler, who lived in the other wing of the apartment house, to escape with her, and they’d play on the swings of the Catholic school until one of the nuns would grip their arms and lead them home.
Though the fence grew, Hanna scaled it, following a vague yearning that sent her beyond her own world. And then one humid summer day, a few months after her fifth birthday, she saw the little woman in the open market with a basket, talking to a farmer who was weighing tomatoes for her, a yellow cardigan flopping around her yellow-and-blue housedress. And all at once Hanna knew why she’d been running away. Darting toward the little woman, she slipped her fingers into the wide palm and beamed at the round face that was so much closer to hers than the faces of other grown-ups. Inside, she felt a deep blue quiet, a slow blue swirl of quiet, the same blue as the flowers on the housedress and the eyes in front of her, blue eyes that blinked while the big hand tugged to get away from her.
But Hanna was not about to let go.
“Where is your mother?”
“At home. Painting.”
“Does she—”
“I climbed across the fence.”
“You shouldn’t do that.”
“I know.”
A stork flew across the roof of the bakery, and Hanna pointed toward it. They both followed its course until it landed on Potter’s bar.
“When I was younger than you,” said the little woman, “my mother made me leave sugar cubes on the windowsill.”
“Why?”
“So the stork would bring me a sister or brother. But I ate the sugar… And my brother died.”
“My brother died too.”
“I was at his funeral.”
“But he came from my mother’s belly. Not from a stork.”
“At least your brother was born alive. Mine died before he was born.”
“How?”
“I never got to touch him.”
“What’s his name?”
“Horst. It’s on our gravestone.”
“My brother was called Joachim. Did you see me at his funeral?”
“Yes.”
“Did I cry?”
“You were too little to understand.… I better take you home.”
“Can I visit you?”
“Those tomatoes—I have to pay for them. Let go of me.”
Hanna swatted at a fly that was about to land on her sweaty arm and transferred her grip to the handle of Trudi’s basket. “Now I would cry.”
The blue eyes alighted on her.
Nearby, the engine of a motor scooter kicked on and grew to a clamor as the fat priest drove past the open market, his bulk teetering on the small seat. He seemed in a good mood and waved at parishioners who greeted him. In the months since his sister, Hannelore, had arrived to take his housekeeper’s place, his sermons had become more uplifting. People said it hadn’t been easy for him to persuade Fräulein Teschner to leave for a better job, and they said his sister was lucky to be working for him. Who else would want a spinster with crippled hands? But Trudi wouldn’t let anyone say a word against Hannelore Beier. Where once the pastor’s sister would have made her uncomfortable, she now had her own code of honor toward others who were regarded as freaks.
At the next wooden stand, a
farmwoman was crossing out the chalk prices on the slate signs and writing new numbers beneath. Trudi chose eight white mushrooms and a small head of cauliflower. Hanna was still holding on to the basket when they reached her mother’s apartment house and wouldn’t let go until her mother said that, if it was all right with Trudi, she’d bring her over to the pay-library soon.
Trudi hesitated. It had been more than two years since Hanna had been inside her house. She made herself try it out—a picture of herself and Hanna—and it no longer felt dangerous: they were sitting at her kitchen table; between them stood the satin hatbox in which her mother used to keep her paper dolls, and she was showing the girl how to fold tabs over the shoulders and hips of the dolls. Hanna laughed as she dressed them in their long paper gowns, rich shades of purples and reds and greens, and gave them matching hats and parasols.
Slowly Trudi nodded, and Hanna released the basket so abruptly that it tumbled to the ground.
“When?” the girl asked as she scooped up the vegetables. “When?”
“It’s up to your mother.”
Trudi felt cautious around the child who came at her with years of stored-up affection. But gradually, as she came to trust her own borders, she began to enjoy Hanna’s visits. It gave her pleasure to surprise her with gifts: a coloring book and crayons; pastry with whipped cream and chocolate shavings; two green ribbons that matched her Sunday dress.
Hanna knew some of the songs that Trudi had learned as a child, and they sometimes sang them together: “Fuchs du hast die Gans gestohlen”… or “Wie das Fähnchen auf dem Turme…” Trudi let her play with the music box that Emil Hesping had given her, and brought out photos that Herr Abramowitz had taken of her when she’d been Hanna’s age. Yet those stiff prints in hues of brown, tinged with red, were all darker than she remembered it being at the time they’d been taken.
Down by the brook Trudi showed Hanna what she’d seen with her mother the day of her brother’s funeral—how to look beyond the moving sheen of water and find not only the silt at the bottom of the brook, but also the sky and their very own faces mirrored in the current.
They were playing with the paper dolls the day the wooden icebox was replaced by an electric refrigerator. It stood as tall as Trudi’s shoulders and made a purring sound that came on for periods at a time like the buzzing of a fly, reverberating through the house. Leo Montag, who dozed much of the day, could sleep right through it, but the first few nights Trudi was awakened by the sound, and the more she tried to ignore it, the more persistent its droning became, pulsating in her ears like water trapped in there after swimming.
At first Trudi always had something to show or give to Hanna, but she soon realized that the girl liked nothing better than to hear her stories. Far more reflective than Jutta, who burned within the moment, Hanna circled through Trudi’s stories, finding links, bridging gaps with questions that drove Trudi deeper into her own memories. And as she became more of a participant in her stories, she felt a joy that came from revealing herself.
Yet, like other children who’d been born late in the war or afterwards, Hanna did not ask about the war. For these children, Trudi knew, the silence was normal: they were growing up with it. Normal—it was a terrible word if you thought about it. Most realized there had been a war—after all, there were still some ruins to prove that—but they’d learned early on that it was not proper to mention that war, even if, deep inside their guts, vague questions would stir. Trudi hoped that, once Hanna got older, Jutta would tell her about the war. It was unlikely that Klaus would. All she could do was encourage Hanna to ask her anything she wanted to know.
“Anything?” There was a wonder, a craving in the girl’s eyes.
“Anything.” They were in Trudi’s kitchen, and Hanna was balancing along the platforms in front of the cabinets. “I’ll answer it if I can. And if I can’t or don’t want to—or if you’re too young to know—I’ll say so.”
“Are you little because your mother dropped you on your head?” Trudi stiffened. “Who said so?”
“Rolf’s mother.”
“I could tell you stories about that Klara Brocker. She’s the last who should say anything about me.” Trudi stopped herself. She’d promised Hanna answers, not tirades. “I’m little because I was born that way. It’s like being born with red hair like your father or with a crooked finger like Frau Blau. I used to think her finger was like that from dusting.… There’s a name for people like me—Zwerg—not that I like the name, but that’s what it’s called. I know that people warn children they’ll look like me if they don’t brush their teeth or don’t finish their liver or eat butter with a spoon or kill frogs or cross the street without looking or touch spiders or—”
“But I like it that you’re little.”
Trudi stared at her.
“And I want a house like yours when I’m grown-up.”
“By then you’ll be too tall for these platforms.”
“Maybe I can stay little.”
“It’s nothing to wish for, child.”
“And who told you about him?” Trudi said the day Hanna asked her about the man by the river.
“Herr Immers.”
“The old one or his son?”
“They’re both old.”
Trudi laughed. “For you they would be. Just like me.” The pay-library was empty, and she was letting Hanna help her return books to their shelves.
“You’re not real old.”
“I can still walk without a cane.”
Hanna nodded, serious.
“That was a joke. About the cane … Tell me—what did you hear from Herr Immers?”
“He and your father got you out in time.”
“In time for what?”
“To save you.”
“Save me, huh? Must have been the son then … That man by the river is ten—no, a hundred times better than any of the Immers.” She straightened her shoulders. “I could have married him.”
Hanna climbed to the top of the ladder and sat there, elbows on her knees, peering down at Trudi.
“That man,” Trudi said, “he was a kind man, a good man.…” She smelled his scent, felt the weight of his long body. How could Max be this close? This far away? “But people in this town, they can’t imagine that a man like that would bother with me. No—they find it easier to believe that he must have meant me harm.”
“Herr Immers said he was naked.”
“Herr Immers is right. You see, the man wanted to swim and didn’t have his bathing suit.”
“My mother swims without a bathing suit. When she’s out in the ocean. Or the river. Then she takes it off. My father says she’ll lose it some day.”
“He would say that.”
“Did the man swim?”
“He was a good swimmer.”
“Why didn’t you marry him?”
“Because he didn’t come back.”
“Maybe he’s on his way.”
“Oh, Hanna.” She was back to her endless days of waiting, of willing Max to come back to her. “Tell me what you saw this time, Max.”
“I’ll paint it for you.” “Tell me now.…” The flush of yellow-orange petals spreading across white walls of cities and into the sky. “He was a painter.”
“Like my mother?”
Trudi nodded.
“Do you miss him?”
All at once she was crying, crying in front of this child who slid down the ladder and wrapped her arms around her and kept saying, “You got me now.”
“And I’ll always have him too. You see—You see, Hanna, he had to go to another country.… He is a builder of cities, of houses so beautiful you can hardly imagine them.…” She cried as she evoked Max for Hanna, building light from memory and grief, the kind of light you find in shadowy spaces—not the pretty glimmer that passes quickly, but light that carries its own flip side of darkness, of oddness, ugliness even—like the flash of strawberry red against a woman’s white fingers.
But Han
na’s father was shocked by the story that his daughter brought home, and he was standing outside the pay-library the following morning when Trudi unlocked the door. With a clipped greeting, he stalked past her in his starched white jacket.
“Hanna is too young for stories like that.”
Trudi closed the door and followed him to the counter. “Stories like what?”
“About that man by the river. We all know you’d never seen him before.”
“Do we now?”
His eyes flicked from her and down to his hands.
She remembered how much she had wanted to touch those hands long ago. And she remembered the dress she’d worn the night she’d danced with him, the sleeveless chiffon with the Spanish bolero jacket that Frau Abramowitz had given her. She remembered walking on her toes in those absurd high heels, and she thought how much more comfortable she felt now in her flat canvas shoes and wash-softened housedress.
“And what if I had known him, Klaus Malter, what then? Would that change anything? What if I had known him for months? Or years? What if he was the kind of man who, after he kissed me, did not pretend it had never happened?”
As the dentist’s face turned red, a brighter shade of red than his beard, she knew that he, too, had never forgotten that kiss, had always remembered it and felt uneasy about it, and in that moment of victory, she thought how both their lives might have been easier if they’d talked about that night. Perhaps then, rather than this victory, she could have had his friendship.
“What if this man actually loved me?” she whispered.
“I— I can’t answer that.”
“I’m not asking you to answer it. I want you to imagine it.”
He flushed an even deeper red. “Hanna is only five. She is better off not hearing things like that.”