Stones From the River

by Ursula Hegi

  Sometimes, to take the worry from his daughter’s eyes, he’d let her help him down the stairs and settle him on Emil’s sofa while she sat and read to him; but he was far more comfortable in his room, surrounded by Gertrud’s photos. Over the decades, they had faded so much that her features were unrecognizable to anyone but himself—at most images of a ghost woman, nuances of pearly gray—yet what he saw was her black, tangled hair, the feverish pink of her face.

  The night the dike broke, Leo thought he heard Gertrud laugh outside his window. The Rhein had been frozen solid all winter, and when the ice thinned, the river spilled across the bank, covering the charred remains of a shepherd’s fire between the rocks, and swelling across the meadows. As in other years, the townspeople had tried to reinforce the dike with sand-filled bags and shovelfuls of earth. Yet, their river broke through the barricades, yanking trees and bushes out by their roots as if they were weeds. It flowed into streets and houses, across beds and tables. From the taxidermist’s shop the flood liberated the family’s stuffed dachshund and a dusty squirrel.

  As torrents of rain added to the floods, the water rose. Families carried their belonging to the upper floors. Some moved in with neighbors in apartments above them. Mass was held in the chapel on the hill. From his bedroom, Leo Montag could watch the boats in the streets. He thought this flood was turning Burgdorf into more of a community than it had been since the war: suddenly, people were all fighting the same enemy, their river, an enemy that was easily defined and outside themselves. For some, the flood even became something festive: they’d point to a sparrow, to a titmouse or pigeon; they’d marvel that the sea gulls had followed the Rhein into town.

  After the river had retreated, Frau Weskopp reported a grave robbery. She was hysterical when she arrived at the police station on her bicycle, but when Andreas Beil checked her family grave, it turned out that the flood—as with other graves—had simply leveled the earth above the middle coffin, leaving a shallow depression.

  That same day, Trudi cooked her father a surprise dinner for his sixty-seventh birthday: a roasted chicken she’d traded for library books, new potatoes and fresh peas, a strawberry cake and wine. While preparing the meal, she managed to stop fretting about him for a while because she imagined how much he would enjoy the food. After Frau Doktor Korten stopped by to give him his injection, Trudi led her father to the table, set with candles and her mother’s best linen tablecloth, which she’d ironed until you couldn’t detect a single crease. His eyes shimmered as he watched the candles, but he hardly ate. When Trudi helped him back upstairs, he felt so light she thought she could have carried him, and he fell asleep while she read to him from his birthday present, a book by Bertolt Brecht that he hadn’t been able to replace so far.

  He died the afternoon of the following day. She knew it before she raced up to his room, knew it by looking at the branches of the chestnut tree outside the window of the library and recalling what her father had told her about uprooting that tree from its earth by the flour mill and planting it here to keep her mother home. It hadn’t worked for her mother, and now—when the tree had grown taller than their house, providing shade and, come autumn, glossy chestnuts that burst from their prickly shells—it hadn’t worked for her father either. He too, had gotten away, leaving his body for her to find.

  Frau Weiler and other neighbor women moved into her life, her house, making burial arrangements that seemed incredibly complicated to her though, in past years, she’d helped make them for other families. Dazed, she drifted from one room to another, refusing food when it was held out to her, staring past people who stood in her path and wanted to talk to her about her father’s tenderness, his thoughtfulness.

  Matthias Berger arrived on the train for the funeral, and Klaus Malter asked if he could drive Trudi to the cemetery, his voice hushed as if he were afraid to wake her father. More people came to Leo Montag’s burial than to anyone else’s in years. The widows of Burgdorf carried flowers to his grave as if they were grieving for their own husbands, and when Trudi looked beyond her own tears, she saw immeasurable sorrow as though her father really had left behind all those widows.

  At the gravesite, Herr Stosick—heavy and bald—stood behind her as if prepared to brace her should she faint. All the men from the chess club were there, even though her father hadn’t attended in a long time. Ingrid’s daughter, her braids in even plaits down the front of her dress, stood next to her grandfather, whose shadow would forever lie across the ceiling of Ingrid’s room. If only she could say to Karin, “I knew your mother when she was a young girl… If only she could impart to Karin all she had loved about Ingrid. She thought of her father, who had lived with such grace, and how fortunate she was to have her memories of him. How she wished Karin could remember her mother like that. She saw herself hiding in the church the day the Americans had arrived, saw Ingrid as she bent to lay her first daughter into her arms. “I’ll be there” she silently promised the girl, “I’ll be there when you’re old enough to ask about your mother”

  Angelika Tegern brought a bouquet of white lilies to the gravesite, and Frau Weskopp carried two clay pots with violets, one for Leo Montag, the other for Helmut Eberhardt because the midwife—who was so meticulous when it came to her house—had neglected to take care of her husband’s grave ever since her daughter had become ill with polio. Now Frau Weskopp and the other widows tended the grave—not out of loyalty to Helmut, but because they couldn’t let the grave of a soldier look disorderly.

  The midwife was convinced her husband’s spirit was punishing her with Renate’s illness because she’d named the child after his mother. To combat his fury, she would invoke the older Renate. It seemed most of her prayers were directed to her, rather than to Jesus or the saints. Whenever the midwife visited her daughter in St. Lukas Hospital, she’d bring her mother-in-law’s shawl and wrap her daughter in the soft folds, trusting that, at least for then, both of them were safe.

  Sometimes she thought her link to the older Renate was stronger than to her own children. Out of respect for her, the midwife still lived upstairs with her children while maintaining the downstairs for Renate. And she thought it only fitting that, each summer, the inedible pears on the tree reminded her and the whole town of the day her mother-in-law had been taken away.

  Leo Montag’s funeral feast was held at the house of Frau Blau, who, at ninety-two, had been widowed several years and looked withered in her wheelchair. Yet, her house smelled of fresh floor wax, and everyone knew she still dusted whatever she could reach from her wheelchair.

  “Your father—” Frau Blau grabbed Trudi’s wrist with unsettling strength when she arrived in the Malters’ car, “your father was able to love his country despite his disillusion with it.…” Her wrinkled chin worked, and her lips moved forward as she swallowed. “You’ve lost the pride in your Vaterland, Trudi. Never forget that we are a nation that is respected in all of Europe.… We are known to be industrious, loyal, intelligent, clean and orderly—” She coughed, hard.

  Trudi tried to loosen herself from the old woman’s grasp. “Let me bring you a glass of water.” Her scalp was hurting, each single hair, as if all of her nerves ended there.

  “So many good qualities, Trudi. There are a lot of good people, a lot of important people in Germany—”

  “I know that, but—”

  “—builders and artists and composers who are famous throughout the world…. Great scientists and poets, Trudi… You need not be ashamed of being German.”

  “I am burdened by being German. We all are.”

  “Your father—”

  “My father.… You know what he used to tell me, Frau Blau? That as long as our country has a need for violence to settle conflict, it can happen again.”

  “No, no, Trudi. This whole Unglück—misfortune—came to the Vaterland through one individual, and that’s very regrettable.… Still, it has not spoiled the entire nation.”

  As soon as Trudi freed herself, her ha
nds were taken by others, while voices above her told her how wonderful her father had been. She couldn’t bear to look up into those faces that made her grief public. What she wanted was to be alone in her house with her sorrow and thoughts of her father. But Frau Weiler was confiding in her that she was thinking of selling her grocery store and moving into one of the new apartments around the corner from her grandchildren; and Fritz Hansen, fresh gauze already stained with pus, was bringing her his parents’ condolences and yellow-white Käsekuchen—cheesecake—that no one would touch. Frau Tegern was inviting her to have dinner with her and her husband—“You set the day. Any time. Just let me know.…”—while Matthias was whispering to her about his stolen years—“I keep postponing my vows.…” And then Klaus Malter, his voice filled with anguish as though he’d forgotten years of reserve, was telling her that he worried his wife, considering their age gap, would outlive him by many years, and Trudi saw him lying in his marriage bed, alone.

  As the guests began to leave, she suddenly no longer wanted to be by herself and asked Matthias to walk her next door. But when he sat down at the piano and played for her, his music was a gift that had arrived too late.

  • • •

  In the weeks after the funeral, Trudi kept finding gifts on her doorstep, left anonymously in the spirit of the unknown benefactor: butter-soft leather slippers exactly her size; the lace collar she’d looked at in a store months ago; a blue-and-white porcelain vase like the one she’d seen in Frau Tegern’s solarium; and food—complete meals arranged on plates and covered with towels.

  Without her father, the house felt huge, empty, and she spent as much time away from it as possible. She no longer had her hot meal at midday but ate black bread and cheese, and wandered through town while the pay-library was closed, doing what she knew best: collecting stories. Though new bits of gossip kept her busy, people could tell that she wasn’t really engaged. She’d forget she was talking in the middle of a sentence, and she’d walk away without asking the right questions. Her cheeks did not look as full as usual, and sometimes it seemed she limped.

  In the evenings, which were turning lighter now, she’d walk again, until tired. Her legs ached and her lower back would lock if she sat down, but gradually her body adjusted to the walks. Still, there was no getting away from the awareness of her father’s death because the women who came to the pay-library for books wanted to talk about Leo, and she’d detect the longing for him in their voices. At times she thought she still heard him moving in the kitchen or living room while she waited on customers, and she’d half expect him to open a door and stand there, leaning on his cane, wearing those layers of clothes that couldn’t keep him warm enough. The day-to-day being without him was worse than his actual death. What she missed most was the certainty of being able to share the small details of your life with someone who knew you so well. Who else could possibly care what you’d thought while looking out of the window or what you’d eaten for breakfast?

  When she finally brought herself to sort out her father’s belongings, she began by taking down the brittle photos of her dead mother. She opened the wardrobe to take out his suits and saw herself as a small girl standing inside there, her mother’s silk against her cheeks, feeling so sure her mother would return—only then she had been young enough to believe it could be possible.

  As she packed her father’s clothes for the poor of the church, she came across one of her mother’s hatboxes with a red felt hat long out of fashion. Perhaps she could give it to Monika Buttgereit, who’d fix it into something stylish. Though Sabine Buttgereit had been dead nearly six years, the music teacher and Alfred Meier continued the kind of courtship you read about in fairy tales, the kind of courtship the priest used as an example when he counseled young couples who were eager to get engaged. Although the two went out every Saturday evening, Herr Meier wouldn’t even enter Monika’s apartment when he’d call for her, carrying a bouquet of flowers. She’d always be ready when he’d arrive, and he wouldn’t have to wait for more than a heartbeat or two before she’d step out, shake his hand, admire the flowers, and disappear briefly to set them into a vase that she’d already filled with water. It was the same when he brought her back: he’d accompany her to the door, shake her hand, and then walk back to his car, somewhat stiff, as if—so the old women would suspect—his passion had been outweighed by the habit of romantic courtship.

  When the pastor’s sister sent two altar boys to the pay-library, they loaded the boxes with Leo Montag’s belongings onto a wooden cart and pulled them to the rectory. All Trudi held on to were her father’s books, his carved chess set, and his gray cardigan, which she kept hanging from his chair, the way he used to. At times, when she’d pass it, she’d give it a reassuring squeeze.

  Late one evening, after she’d walked for hours, someone knocked on her door. It was Jutta Malter, wearing the softest angora sweater, carrying a jar of last summer’s raspberries. She insisted on pouring the berries in a bowl for Trudi—with milk and a sprinkling of sugar—and she sat and watched, quietly, while Trudi ate. These berries filled something inside Trudi, nurtured her far more than the solid meals others had brought her, and though her old fear of getting ill from sugar rose briefly within her, it ceased as soon as Jutta laid one arm around her shoulders. “Hanna has missed you,” she said.

  That night Trudi kept waking from the same urgent dream of being at the flour mill with her father and Georg. Each time she yielded to sleep, the dream—it warned her about something she was supposed to remember, of that she was sure even while dreaming—snagged her again, and the last time it woke her, around five, she got up and stood by her window. But she couldn’t separate her memories of the mill from the dream images; the harder she tried, the more elusive the dream became until, by the end of the day when she locked the pay-library, she was only left with the sense of urgency and danger she’d felt in her dream.

  Instead of cooking her evening meal, she climbed on her bicycle and rode out to the mill, which had never been rebuilt. When she reached the woods that ringed the gutted building, mist rose from the swamps, and it was so quiet she thought she heard the sky breathing. Then, with a start, she realized it was her own breath.

  Though the arches were shattered, she could still see the elegant sweep of the bricks as she had in her dream. Here, she and Georg Weiler had played tag, their voices spiraling above the red tile roof and the forest. She felt it again, the foreboding that had been with her that day more than three decades ago—except that now she stood surrounded by that very destruction: trees thrust their blighted crowns toward the torn roof; crumbling stairs ascended into emptiness; a blackened beam, half burned and thinned out in places, spanned the gap between the chimney and the nearest wall. But she couldn’t smell fire, only the sweet dampness of decaying wood.

  A dried thistle hindered the growth of a clump of camomile, and as she pulled it out, she saw Georg and herself, laughing, gathering bouquets of purple thistles, which they’d taken home to make thistle soup with sand and water from their brook. And her father—she saw her father’s face as it had been that day and knew he’d been young like this in her dream—her father had taken a spoon and, with obvious delight, had dipped it into their soup.

  And now her father was dead.

  It hit her so strongly, that she crouched right where she was and brought her arms around her middle. The scent of camomile enveloped her, and as she looked down, the tiny flowers were right in front of her, their yellow centers ringed by white petals. The closer she looked, the more she saw, and the more she forgot herself and her pain and became part of something she couldn’t define as if, by getting closer to a smaller world, she had found a larger world. How many times had she longed for a world where she could travel free or almost free, a world where she knew she belonged? How often had she imagined living on the island of the little people? Yet, all she needed was here, already here. Pia had been right—this was where she belonged. Despite the silence of war. Because of t
he silence. Working with Emil Hesping and the fugitives had taught her what it was like to belong, that you could initiate it, build it, be it.

  She stood up and walked over to a tree stump by the chimney. Sitting down, she leaned her back against the bricks and crumbling mortar. Her left knee felt stiff, and as she pulled her foot close and rubbed her leg, gently, from her ankle to her knee until it felt supple, she could no longer imagine herself with any kind of different body. A new body would take years to get used to. No more hanging from door frames, she promised herself, forgiving her younger self for the way she’d mistreated her body. Shards glinted among moss and weeds that sprouted from the rubble—beauty pressing through debris. Yet, the feeling of death persisted all around her, and suddenly she knew it came from her dream. Georg, she thought, Georg, and felt the danger once more, saw her father’s face, young and solemn, and understood she had dreamed Georg’s death. And as she strained to see further—it would come from his own hands, his death, and his wife would do nothing to stop him—he was standing there before her, a boy who looks like a girl like a girl like a girl, in his dainty blue smock that covered his knees, blond ringlets down to his shoulders. “Look.” He held out a black and orange butterfly to her. “I bet you this one can still fly. I didn’t rub any dust from the wings. Look.” He tossed the butterfly into the air, watched it disappear. His face was tilted up as it used to be when he’d waited outside her window for her to come out and play, and he looked the way he had before he’d become like other boys, before that day in the barn, before he’d fought in the war, before the drinking, before the beating of his wife and children, before absolution had become a sham—while she stood there inside her body of thirty-six years, severed from him by time, reunited to him by time.