Stones From the River

by Ursula Hegi

  “How do they eat?”

  “Tidy. Not like dogs. Dogs slobber all over the place.”

  Trudi came into the kitchen with a bucket of coals and opened the front of the stove. “Did you sleep well?”

  Eva yawned. “Better than I thought I would.”

  “My cat is waiting for me to come back to the railroad station,” the boy said.

  “That’s good,” Eva said.

  “Do you think she will turn into a magical cat?”

  The boy’s mother mumbled something in her sleep and turned on her stomach, her face screened by her hair.

  “A magical cat?” Eva whispered.

  “Like your father’s cat.”

  “The cat that slept on your father’s throat,” Trudi explained quickly. “I told Konrad about the cat you let into your father’s bedroom so that she could cure him.” Her voice implored Eva to go along with her story.

  “Ah, that cat,” Eva said, but in her eyes Trudi read the awareness of another cat—the kitten in Hans-Jürgen’s outstretched arms, a living streak of fur—and for a moment they both were there again, girls in that barn, whirling, whirling within that immense church space and the smell of animals and straw, suspended in that ruthless sliver of time before the kitten was relinquished to its death.

  “And then …” the boy said, “your father lifted you up.”

  “Yes …?” Eva said slowly.

  “He got strong enough to lift you up. Before the cat made him well, he couldn’t even lift a cup.”

  “… not even a cup.”

  “Did you see the cat again?”

  She glanced past the boy at Trudi, who was shaking her head. “No,” Eva said, “I never saw the cat again.”

  The boy looked disappointed.

  “I read about her, though,” Eva said.

  Trudi stepped closer.

  “I read about her in a magazine,” Eva said. “She became very famous. A doctor—a Frau Doktor—wrote an article about the cat. The Frau Doktor used the cat to … to—”

  “To cure those patients she couldn’t help,” Trudi said.

  “Right. That’s what she did.”

  “My cat has nine lives. Only two of them are used up.”

  “Eva knows a good trick for people who have to hide,” Trudi said.

  “I do?”

  “Teach Konrad what to do if he has to sneeze.”

  Eva frowned and shook her head.

  “The thing with your tongue. Remember?”

  “I’d forgotten about that.”

  “I used to practice it.”

  “Then you show him.”

  “No, it came from you.”

  Eva sat up and pushed the blanket away. Her pleated skirt was wrinkled. “Watch this.” Bringing her face close to the boy’s, she opened her mouth wide, touched the tip of her tongue to the roof of her mouth, and wiggled it. “Now you do it.”

  The boy tried it and laughed. “It tickles.”

  “It’s supposed to tickle, silly.”

  “An old Indian trick,” Trudi said. “It keeps you from sneezing if you’re hiding. But if you laugh, it doesn’t do any good.”

  “That’s right,” Eva warned. “If you laugh, it—” She stopped and reached for Trudi. “Now I remember what you said that day when I showed you. God—”

  Trudi knelt down by Eva’s pillow. “What is it?”

  “You said you didn’t know who would want to capture us.”

  “Now we know.” Trudi held her.

  Eva’s eyes clouded with defeat. “But Konrad won’t let anything happen to us,” she said resolutely. “Konrad will keep very, very quiet because he has things to do after all this is over. Konrad has a cat he needs to get from a railroad station.”

  The boy beamed at her.

  Frau Neimann regarded Eva’s arrival with alarm, and though Trudi tried to reassure her, she acted as though the new fugitive endangered all of them. But the boy was fascinated by Eva, who let him try on her dark-rimmed glasses; he liked to touch the intricate blue-and-silver pin that Eva’s mother used to wear and had pinned to Eva’s blouse the night they’d fled.

  One evening, the third week of Eva’s stay, Trudi braided her friend’s hair in the living room while the others were still in the kitchen. The gathered collar of Eva’s blouse lay below the delicate half ring of bones that linked her shoulder blades and the hollow at the base of her throat, and the fabric was the same shade of ivory as her skin. As Trudi stood behind Eva’s chair and the dark strands of hair glided through her fingers, it was as though the two of them were back at the second-grade spring concert at Fräulein Birnsteig’s mansion. She smelled the cut grass and the lilacs in the formal garden, saw the ivy winding up the white walls, heard the splendid piano music that poured from the open glass doors, and felt Eva’s fingers move through her hair.…

  “I miss him,” Eva said.

  Trudi recalled the sharp bliss of that concert evening, and her anguish when the other kids had spurned Eva the next day in school. For an instant there, as she let her fingers weave the hair, she felt as if back then she had tainted Eva with her difference, and that because of it she was responsible for her persecution now; and even though she knew it wasn’t like that at all, it felt as though she personified the difference that made Eva an outcast.

  “I wish I could sleep with him tonight.…”

  Trudi’s arms felt heavy and cold. She wanted to drop them, but then the braid would come undone.

  “People don’t really know Alexander. He doesn’t let them know him—the way he really is. People see him as a hard-working man, quite content with what he does … a bit formal.”

  Trudi had heard all that about Alexander, that and how much it mattered to him what the town thought of him. Formal was too mild a description for him. Stuffy was more like it. People like Alexander made her impatient: they focused so much on their manners that they missed the essence of what was going on.

  “He took such a risk, coming with me to the police station,” Eva said. “Now I know that even if things get worse, if I get deported—”

  “Don’t even think about that.”

  “—he would come along. Don’t you see how much comfort that gives me—knowing he would?”

  “I want you to take your comfort from knowing you won’t get caught. You hear me?”

  Eva had never thought as much about her husband as during those weeks she’d lived in Trudi’s house. She’d only seen him once, when he’d come without warning late one night, sending her and the boy and his mother scurrying into the tunnel.

  “I won’t allow this.” Leo Montag admonished Alexander, his voice sterner than Trudi had ever heard it. “The Gestapo know by now that your wife is hiding somewhere. All they need to do is follow you and you’ll lead them right here.”

  “No one was watching me.”

  “You can’t be the judge of that. Not in the dark.”

  “I was careful.”

  “So are they.”

  “I—”

  “This is not for discussion. I’m telling you not to come back. You’re jeopardizing all of us.”

  When Alexander embraced Eva before leaving, he moaned into her hair. “I wish you could come with me tonight.…” But immediately he said, “No, I’m selfish. Don’t listen to me. I’m selfish. It’s just that I want you so much.”

  “I want to be with you, too.”

  The rest of that night, Eva felt angry with Trudi and her father. How could they be so intolerant? How could they possibly understand a love like hers? Leo had been a widower for as long as Eva could recall, and Trudi—well, Trudi with her body the way it was would never experience the kind of passion that Eva knew.

  As Trudi wound a thin ribbon around the end of the braid, Eva sighed. “I keep thinking about Alexander.”

  “Remember that time at the beer garden, about nine years ago? You and Alexander weren’t engaged yet.”

  Eva smiled and nodded. They’d danced that night, and e
ven when they’d stepped away from one another, she’d still felt it—that pull—as though they were caressing the air between them. She hadn’t expected that pull to last this long, two years of courtship and seven of marriage, but if anything, it had become stronger with the years.

  “You stopped at our table,” Trudi said, her hands on Eva’s shoulders as if to keep her from turning around and looking at her face.

  Eva had to think for a moment. Across from her, the spidery pattern of ferns melted into the faded brown background of the wallpaper. When she and Trudi had been girls, those ferns had been white, but over the years they’d turned ashen, diminishing the contrast between them and what once had been a deep chocolate brown.

  “At the beer garden,” Trudi prompted her.

  “You … you were with Ingrid Baum and Klaus Malter.”

  “Did you see me dance with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you see?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Tell me what you saw.”

  “I saw you dance.…”

  “And—”

  “And Klaus kissed you.”

  Behind her, Trudi let out a breath—a single breath so deep that it felt to Eva it must have been held inside forever.

  “What’s wrong, Trudi?” She swiveled around and stared at her.

  Trudi’s eyes had gone pale and distant in her broad face.

  “Trudi?”

  “No one—No one ever said anything.”

  “What was there to say?” Eva asked, and then—catching herself—said softly, “Of course.”

  Trudi felt a cold swell of anger. “Of course what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Of course it has been the only kiss in poor Trudi’s life.…” Now her eyes were tearing into Eva. “Is that what you’re thinking, Eva Sturm?”

  “I didn’t mean anything like that.”

  “Then why did you say of course?”

  “Because I didn’t understand why you were asking me about that night. The of course had to do with Klaus. He said nothing about kissing you?”

  “Not once.”

  “That—that swine. Until now, I had a much higher opinion of him.”

  “But you saw us.”

  “Yes, I saw you.” Eva took Trudi’s face between her hands. Her fingers lay warm against Trudi’s wide jawbone and cheeks. “You looked beautiful that night,”

  “At times I’ve wondered if it really happened.”

  “It did.” The crest of Eva’s birthmark showed above the gathered collar of her blouse, and Trudi saw her as she had stood that long-ago day by the brook, her undershirt pulled up to reveal her own difference. She wondered if the mark had grown fainter as Eva’s skin had stretched to accommodate her breasts and suddenly felt embarrassed because she would have liked to see if the birthmark still covered Eva’s nipples. “And when I’ll have babies, they’ll drink red milk from me” Now Eva might never have babies. Not if she stays in this country, Trudi thought, wishing she could keep her friend sheltered within the fairy-tale vines she had once dreamed for her.

  “I remember watching you as you danced,” Eva said. “I remember feeling surprised because I didn’t know you could dance so well.”

  “I didn’t know how to dance.”

  “You must have some real talent then.”

  “What else? What else did you see?”

  Eva smiled and released Trudi’s face. “Klaus … very much taken with you, enjoying the dance and—”

  “And what?” How greedy her voice sounded.

  “Do you really want to hear this?”

  Trudi swallowed.

  “I saw him kiss you and loving every moment of it. Let’s hope he rots in hell for this.”

  “Not for the kiss—only for pretending it never happened.”

  “He’ll probably confess just before he dies so that he doesn’t have to go to hell.”

  “Yes, five minutes before he stops breathing.”

  Eva laughed. “That’s what I like about your religion: you can be an absolute swine, and if you time it right and confess before you croak, you’re saved. Maybe I ought to convert. Your fat priest certainly tried to snag me.”

  “He’s not my fat priest.” Trudi grinned. “But you’re right about timing. It all comes down to that… knowing when those last five minutes start so you won’t miss them.”

  “Naturally, you’ll have to have a priest handy by then.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Has there been anyone else?”

  Trudi hesitated. “What do you mean?” she asked though she knew exactly what Eva was asking.

  “Another man.”

  “No.… Except—” Trudi shrugged.

  “Tell me.”

  “Oh, well, it doesn’t really mean anything, but…”

  “Tell me!”

  “This—this man … who wants to have dinner with me.”

  “And?” Eva’s eyes glistened.

  “Well, I said no. But I sometimes wonder.… What if I’d said yes?”

  “Anyone I know? What’s his name?”

  “Max. And you don’t know him.”

  “What does he do?”

  “He’s a teacher, a tutor, actually.”

  “How did you meet him?”

  Now Trudi wished she hadn’t mentioned Max at all. Ashamed at how she’d deceived him with her letter, she walked over to the stand with the stuffed squirrel and flicked the dust from its fur.

  But Eva was not about to let up. “How did you meet him? You can tell me.”

  “Oh… he sometimes comes to the library.” It was part of the truth, not a real lie.

  “Next time you see him, tell him you’ll have dinner with him.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know if I’ll see him again.”

  Whenever Emil Hesping came over, Trudi and her father would listen with him to the forbidden British station on the radio that her father kept hidden in the back of his wardrobe. Herr Hesping understood enough English to translate the news for them. As the foreign words traveled to them on a crackling wave, they’d keep the volume low and press their ears against the curved wood of the radio that was the same shade of honey blond as the woodwork in Leo’s bedroom. The station identification—lalalala—was so recognizable that, if you weren’t careful, someone passing in the street might hear it and inform against you.

  The information in newspapers and on the German stations was controlled, but from the British station you could at least find out how far the war had advanced. It felt essential to Trudi to get the correct news of what was happening, and to distribute it even if many of the people who used to wait for her stories were afraid to hear the truth about the war. They’d rather pretend that the British were not bombing the big German cities, or that the Germans had not killed every man in Lidice—the Czechoslovakian town that had harbored the assassins of Reinhard Heydrich, who’d been called the brain behind the persecution of the Jews.

  “What do you think the Americans will do?” Trudi was asked frequently, as though her Aunt Helene in New Hampshire provided her with a direct link to the plans of the American military.

  “The Americans won’t let this go on for much longer,” she’d declare with a certainty she wished she felt.

  She was able to circulate her news faster with the bicycle that she’d bought with money her Aunt Helene had sent her the previous Christmas. It had been in the last package that had made it through from America. At first she’d hesitated to spend the money on herself, but half of the banknotes hidden inside the wooden cores of thread spools had been designated especially for her. In her letter Aunt Helene insisted she buy something for herself, and as soon as Trudi unrolled the bills, they sprang back into coils. After Trudi gave the thread to Herr Blau, who often sewed for the fugitives until late into the night, she bought a bicycle from Ingrid’s father, a child’s bicycle that made her a far more effici
ent messenger.

  It was ironic—adult-size bicycles and tires were no longer available because the shortages of materials reached into every part of people’s lives—but Herr Baum still had two children’s bicycles, luxuries no one could afford, and he gave Trudi a good price on the one she liked best. He added a set of spare tires and an air pump without charging her—“Since it’s for you,” he said, bringing his smile close to her face—but she took care to step away from him, quickly, before he could pinch her bottom.

  It was the first bicycle she’d owned. The tricycle she’d been given as a child had never been right for her: at first she hadn’t been able to reach the pedals, and by the time she could, other children her age were racing around on two-wheelers and she felt ashamed to be riding a tricycle. But this new bicycle had the proportions of an adult’s bicycle, except it was smaller altogether, built low, and there was nothing childish about its solid white frame and black seat.

  Trudi learned how to ride it within a day. To make sure it wouldn’t get stolen, she kept it indoors. Some evenings she taught Konrad, who hadn’t learned to ride a two-wheeler yet, to ride it up and down the hallway, running behind him laughing as he wobbled along.

  Now, if she had to, she could be ready to ride anywhere in minutes: not bothering with a corset or stockings, she’d throw on clothes without stopping to think if they matched. Once, when she saw her reflection on the bicycle in the window of the grocery store—her striped cardigan flapping around her flowered dress—she thought how horrified Frau Simon would be at her appearance.

  Konrad was helping her to polish the bike with a chamois cloth the night they heard the shots nearby, but she didn’t find out till morning what had happened. Two Jewish men had been discovered in the attic of the pharmacist’s son-in-law, who was fighting in Russia. They’d both been shot immediately, in front of the pharmacist’s daughter and her mother, who’d covered their faces with their aprons to keep from seeing the blood. When the women were taken to the Theresien-heim for questioning, the pharmacist was brought in, too, still in the long gray underwear he’d been sleeping in when yanked from his bed.

  He tried to convince the officer that he hadn’t spoken to his daughter in over thirty years. “She married a Protestant,” he said as if that would absolve him from any suspicion of complicity in hiding the Jews. His wife had divorced him the year after the daughter’s wedding, he explained, and he hadn’t said a single word to her since then. Or to his grandchildren, who were fully grown and lived elsewhere by now.