by Hegi, Ursula
“His parents weren’t able to keep him alive. I wasn’t able to keep him alive. No one—”
“But he came to me.”
*
“Bitte noch etwas Suppe—please, some more soup.” A man’s voice. From the kitchen.
Sonja Siderova stands up. “No one in this town was able to keep Bruno alive. Listen to me—” Her wide mouth trembles. “What you can do is show our students other directions . . . especially those students you can’t keep from joining.”
Thekla follows her to the door, down the hallway past the photos of Fräulein Siderova surrounded by her students, one for each year she has taught. Twenty-nine.
At her kitchen table, a man—not refined—sits with his elbows next to an empty bowl, faint rims of dirt under his fingernails. When Sonja Siderova introduces him as her boarder, Thekla remembers what Fräulein Buttgereit told her. Not for me then, the bed, the room. How foolish of me. But where will I sleep tonight?
He’s a night-watchman at a bank, Fräulein Siderova says. Definitely not the artist Thekla would have liked to imagine living with her teacher, who will soon paint another portrait of her on another ship, to safety, perhaps.
After the boarder eats his second bowl of soup, he stands up, a stocky man who takes small steps toward the coatrack. How fast could he run if someone were to rob the bank? When he pulls his woolen hat over his forehead, he looks like a bank robber. A slow bank robber. That kind of observation would make Emil laugh. She’ll have to tell Emil—How can I think of laughing when Bruno is dead?
*
The boarder shrugs into his gray coat, leaves for his job, and Sonja Siderova washes his bowl, his spoon. When Thekla offers to dry, Sonja shakes her head.
“I’m going to take my bath now,” she says.
“I’ll get the tub ready for you.”
“I can do that for myself.”
“No need to.” Quickly, before Sonja Siderova can tell her to go home, Thekla heads for the bathroom and bends to put in the plug.
“You don’t have to do this.”
Thekla opens the faucets.
“I don’t want to keep you,” Sonja says, though just a moment ago, it seemed she might be ready to lift one foot and step across the curved rim into the water.
What Thekla needs is a question to hook her teacher in, a question that will allow her to stay here, and then she has it, has always had it, and it makes her sweat. Because it’s more than a hook. Because it’s a truth she doesn’t want but must have for herself. “Michel Abramowitz—Is he my father?”
Chapter 36
SONJA SIDEROVA DOESN’T HESITATE. “Yes, he is.”
Thekla is stunned. Can it really be that easy, finding out for sure? His hands around an open book. The tracks of his comb in his thick hair. “What if I had asked you about him last year?”
“I don’t know.”
“Or when I was a girl? Would you have told me then?”
“Not then.”
“Did you tell me to get back at me?” Instantly, Thekla feels ashamed.
Steam rises in the narrow bathroom, fills the lines in Sonja Siderova’s face until she looks like the teacher Thekla adored as a girl.
Thekla blinks.
“Get back at you for what?” Fräulein Siderova asks.
“For letting Sister Josefine give me your class.”
“Oh, Thekla.”
“That’s why you’re telling me I’m Jewish.” Saying it aloud sets off a fear that makes Thekla dizzy. What will happen to me? No proof. No proof at all. Still, if he is my father—And he is. Is.
Sonja Siderova motions toward the bathroom door. “I can do the rest by myself.” She opens the top button of her blouse.
“One more question? Please?”
“I will take my bath now.” Sonja opens the next button. “I will take off my clothes and take my own bath.” She removes her silver-rimmed spectacles, folds them, and lays them on the ledge of the tub. Opens another button.
*
Thekla backs away. In the hallway she waits, forehead against the closed bathroom door. Staying feels improper. But she can’t bear leaving, now that she is finally near her teacher again. Briefly, it flies at her, the joy at that. I’ll invite you to my classroom, Fräulein Siderova— But her fantasy doesn’t move forward, and she can no longer hide inside plans and manners. Soon, I’ll invite you to my—
Steam curls from beneath the door, beads on her watch. Splashing—Fräulein Siderova must be lowering herself into the tub.
“If you want more hot or cold water, you can turn the faucet with one foot.”
“I have bathed before.”
Thekla pictures her raising the washcloth to her neck. Washing behind her ears. Down her shoulders. She wonders what it would be like to come here again, bring the gifts she has collected. But it feels wrong—in this forever of losing Bruno—to hope for her teacher to love her again. The christening, Bruno, I can go to when I get to hold you at your christening, your tiny face already altklug—old-wise above the white lace gown, prayers and champagne—
“You said you had one more question?” Sonja Siderova’s voice. From the other side of the door.
—holy water on your downy scalp, Bruno, every moment happening at once, back and forth, every moment you have lived—the rosewood chess set that’s yours alone, the punch of your chess clock, and “Schachmatt—Checkmate,” the battle cry of a brainy boy.
Thekla feels herself reeling with despair. I thought I was good for you, Bruno. But I’m no longer who I believed I was.
The water is running again. Thekla imagines Sonja Siderova reaching up with her toes and maneuvering the faucets.
“I can’t hear what you’re saying, Thekla.”
“I . . . didn’t say anything.”
“You had a question.”
“Frau Abramowitz—is that why she disliked me so? Because of him?”
“Ilse did not dislike you.”
“Did he ever think of leaving her? To be with my mother?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“If he had married my mother, I would have grown up in his house.”
“You did grow up in his house.”
Thekla draws a sharp breath. “What are you saying?”
“Ilse tried to adopt you.”
*
“When Almut became pregnant with you,” Sonja Siderova says, “Ilse wanted to bring you up as hers.”
“Just Ilse?”
“You have to understand how much she wanted to be a mother. She was very young, but in four years of marriage she hadn’t become pregnant, and she’d convinced herself she was barren. It was her sorrow. And this child to be was Michel’s . . .”
Me—Thekla braces herself against the wall, slides down till she sits on the floor, legs splayed.
“. . . and Ilse wanted Michel’s child. She paid for your mother’s care, chose a home for unwed mothers by the Nordsee. It had an excellent doctor and was eight hours by train from Burgdorf. She took over in such a capable way that your mother was relieved to let her and agreed to the adoption. No one was to know. To have a child without marriage would have made your mother an outcast. You, too. In the meantime, Ilse pretended to be pregnant so that once the child—you—was born, no one in Burgdorf would suspect. Thekla?”
Thekla nods.
“Are you still there?”
Thekla nods.
Steam billows from the open door, and from that steam Sonja Siderova emerges, a towel clasped in front of herself. “I’m here.” White foam makes her hair stand up in one peak. A horn.
Thekla used to twirl the soapy ends of her little brothers’ hair into horns. They’d giggle, together in the tub, while Thekla would help Mutti wash their hair. Elmar and Dietrich. Wilhelm Jansen’s sons. Not Michel Abramowitz’s. So that’s why Frau Brocker looked after them while Thekla was at the Abramowitzes’.
You did grow up in his house.
“How about him?” Thekla asks.
; “Michel?” Sonja kneels next to Thekla, water dripping from her.
“Michel.”
“He didn’t know what to make of Ilse’s . . . involvement. He held back. Watched. So unlike him. After Almut left, Ilse wanted him to tell his friends she was pregnant. But he refused. That’s when she forced him by strapping on a pregnancy.”
*
A rushing in Thekla’s ears, almost like water, but it’s not water, it’s the telling, and in the telling her life is changing though it was always like this, except she didn’t know. In the telling, she sees Sonja and Ilse stuff two pillowcases, one with the tight roundedness of early pregnancy, the other larger to overlay that roundedness. To each pouch they sew straps that hold the pregnancy in place, and Ilse parades that little belly through the neighborhood, smiles when people glance at it, then tells them she’s expecting. Still, Michel won’t tell anyone.
Ilse adds more padding until he either has to go along or expose her lie and his infidelity. The way he solves it is by letting it be known his child will be born in the fall.
One month before the birth, Ilse’s belly slips during her early morning walk, and Sonja rushes her inside St. Martin’s, where the stone walls and floors release the smell of centuries of incense. Crouching in a pew, Sonja adjusts Ilse’s pouches. Half an hour before mass, and the other pews are still empty; but it’s impossible to hide from the plaster saints who witness everything from their pedestals, St. Stefan and St. Agnes and St. Peter, their painted expressions forever scandalized.
Sonja points to them. “And what’s worse than your striptease for the saints is that we’re on the men’s side of the church.”
Ilse giggles. “Is that a sin here?”
“A near occasion of sin.”
“I’ve never been inside a Catholic church.” Ilse strokes the front of her navy blue dress. “The strangest thing is that I’m loving this . . . this thing that’s to become my child. Can one love a pillow?”
“Depends on what kind of pillow,” Sonja tries to joke.
“I used to worry that I’d forget to strap it on. Now I don’t take it off while I sleep. Michel pretends not to notice. . . . Do you ever think his affair was meant to be?”
“Of course not.”
“I do.”
Sonja winces.
“Because of our child.”
When they get to Ilse’s house, a letter from Nordstrand is waiting. Sender: Almut Jansen. Not Almut Bechtel. Until now, the only letters from Nordstrand have come from Almut’s doctor, who sends his reports to Ilse twice a month.
I was married to Wilhelm Jansen last Sunday, Almut writes. My husband and I will raise our child together. I thank you for all you have done for us.
“But she promised,” Ilse cries.
“It is her child,” Michel reminds her.
“Yours, too. That’s why you don’t want her to come back here.”
“You must be respectful and leave her alone.”
“You didn’t leave her alone.”
“Ilse—”
“She promised me the baby!”
“She’s a married woman now.” Awkwardly, he motions to her middle. “It’s best to take that . . . that thing off.”
“No.” Ilse hugs both arms around herself. “I need to hear it from Almut.”
“She has told you,” he says gently, “in writing.”
*
Sonja is the one who travels with Ilse to Nordstrand. Not Michel. Sonja doesn’t want to. But she can’t let her friend make that long trip alone. Fistfuls of white clouds rush in the opposite direction of their train. Swarms of red and yellow leaves. It’s October. In the compartment, the two women sit next to one another. Ilse’s face is pinched with fear; yet, in her voice is a hope that has nothing to do with Almut’s decision to keep her baby. And that hope makes Sonja ache for her friend, who has traded her high spirits and humor for this fixation on a child that isn’t hers, who believes that—if only she can get to Nordstrand before Almut gives birth, before Almut touches the child—she can hold Almut to her promise.
As the train nears Nordstrand, endless fields flit past their window, meadows edged by dikes, stone houses with roofs made from thick layers of grasses or from clay tiles. Thekla doesn’t want the telling to stop. She knows this landscape well—not from her first year of life but from summers of visiting her grandmother. And in that landscape, Thekla sees her high-pregnant mother facing Ilse Abramowitz, whose strapped-on pregnancy is slack in comparison, their silhouettes like cutouts against the pale light cast off the tidal flats.
“The pillow child . . . ,” Thekla whispers. “Not even real.”
Chapter 37
THE CHILD WHO was you,” Sonja says. “Come now, let’s get you off the floor.”
But when Thekla tries to stand, her legs give out.
“You want to hold on to me?” In Sonja’s damp hair, the foam has grown porous, lacy.
“In a few minutes.” Thekla touches her teacher’s bare shoulder. The skin has dried but still smells of vanilla and rosewater, and Thekla is grateful that she does not pull away.
“Ilse kept hoping your mother would let her adopt you. But of course, your mother wouldn’t. On the train back, Ilse curled into her seat and wept. Just before we reached Burgdorf, she tore off her pregnancy.”
“What did she do with it?”
“Left it behind.”
“On the train.”
“Yes.”
Thekla nods. “Make sure to rinse your hair.”
“What?”
“It’ll itch if you let it dry with soap in it.”
*
“When you were three months old, Ilse and I returned to Nord-strand. By then, your mother worked in a stonecutter’s house. We arrived on a Friday, but we couldn’t visit you until Sunday, Almut’s afternoon off. As soon as she let us in, Ilse handed me Michel’s camera and reached for you.” Sonja closes her eyes for an instant. “Ilse longed to touch you. So futile . . . and sad because it was obvious how strongly your mother loved you. When she finally let Ilse hold you, I took a photo.”
“Tilted? Out of focus?”
“I didn’t know how to use the camera properly. The photo cut off Ilse’s hat but left so much floor that her feet seemed to be floating.”
“So it’s me she’s holding.”
“You’ve seen the photo?”
“What was I like?”
“Inquisitive. You studied us. You didn’t suck your fingers or thumb like most babies. You had a lot of brown hair.”
“Michel’s coloring. How much did my father—How much did Wilhelm Jansen know?”
“He knew.”
Falling then, Wilhelm, falling away from me again faster and getting smaller and smaller and falling and water in his mouth and his history in my bones, Wilhelm, an infant now, falling and almost drowning, forever. No longer my father? But then how come I still feel him in my bones, his falling and his love? I miss you, Vati—
“Does everyone know?” Thekla asks.
“No. Sister Josefine could not have hired you.”
“But some gossiped.”
“Some always gossip.”
*
“You were almost a year old when Ilse disappeared. She hadn’t mentioned you in months, but I knew where to find her. Michel and I went after her. He drove. When we got to Nordstrand, your mother and Ilse had made a pact, the old priest their witness: Ilse would not ask again about adopting you, and Almut would be the Abramowitzes’ housekeeper and have you with her all day.”
“Frau Abramowitz would have me with her, too.”
“That was understood. Also that Ilse would make it possible for you to afford university.”
“Even there . . . How much of my life did she not maneuver?”
“Your family could not have given you that education.”
“And Michel?”
“Cautious. At first Michel was very cautious. But what could he do? We all drove back together, crowded into his car, yo
u on Wilhelm Jansen’s knees, your face to the window. A day’s drive, but you barely slept, startled yourself awake whenever you got sleepy. You wanted to see everything. In Burgdorf, Michel spoke to Alexander Sturm about Wilhelm’s skill as a toymaker. And Michel’s mother, she took to you. She enjoyed reading to you, even when you were too little to sit on your own.”
“I don’t remember her.”
“Judith Abramowitz. She lived with them. Actually, the house belonged to her. An extraordinary woman, someone who read Greek but let chickens into her house. During her final illness, Michel would bring you into her room, let you play on her bed, books all around you. You were her only grandchild when she died. Ruth and Albert weren’t born yet.”
*
“I’m still trying to take in that I’m related to them.”
“To the same degree as you’re related to Elmar and Dietrich. One parent.”
Thekla nods.
“Gradually, Ilse and your mother came to like one another.”
The instant Thekla says, “Not really,” she remembers Mutti and Frau Abramowitz laughing together.
“What is it?”
“Once, Mutti was trying to sew on a button that had fallen off her blouse, but without taking off her blouse, and Frau Abramowitz was teasing, and they were both laughing and saying ‘Wer sich das Zeug am Leibe flickt, der hat den ganzen Tag nicht Glück—if you darn the clothes on your body, you won’t have luck all day.’ Then Frau Abramowitz took the needle and the button from Mutti and sewed it on for her.”
“That comradery was there between them.”
“Sometimes.”
“When they did some project together. Still, it must have been hard for your mother to be working while Ilse read and played with you. Your mother wanted that . . . refinement for you, but she may have thought it would be more equal with her and Ilse.”
“How could it be? She still was the one they paid, the one who washed their clothes and sheets.”