by Ursula Hegi
Mutti reached up to braid her hair, and as she wound it into a coil, her arms were like the arms of two different mothers, freckled on top but pale underneath. Thekla waited for the freckles to slide so that Mutti’s skin would be all the same color.
*
Thekla’s brother Elmar was born the following week, Ruth Abramowitz five weeks later. Thekla felt grown-up because she was the helper now.
When Frau Abramowitz saw Elmar in his wicker carriage outside the pay-library, she kissed his forehead, stroked his chin. “What a beautiful boy,” she said.
“Thank you,” Mutti said.
“Blond like your husband.”
Mutti blinked. Tightened her hands on the handle of the wicker carriage. Walked with it so quickly that Thekla had to run next to her. “I have to make this work,” she whispered. “I have to . . .”
At home, she sat down and, without taking off her shoes, propped her feet on the brocade ottoman Frau Abramowitz had given her.
*
Soon both mothers had baby-bellies again, and Dietrich Jansen was born in July 1905, Albert Abramowitz in August. Thekla didn’t understand why her little brothers had to stay with Frau Brocker across the street while she got to accompany Mutti to the tall house, where Frau Abramowitz read to her and took her to the playground.
She missed her brothers. When she asked Mutti why they couldn’t come along, Mutti said, “It’s because you’re special.”
But it didn’t feel right to Thekla that she had the big corner bedroom to herself, lace and curtains and sun, while Elmar and Dietrich shared a bed in the cubby off the kitchen, where they moved like flashes of sun as they climbed up and down the shelves that used to be for storage. Here, they played with each other. Only with each other. With Thekla they were watchful.
*
Early morning, and Elmar was crying, fussing when they arrived in Frau Brocker’s kitchen.
He held on to Mutti’s waist. “I go with you.”
She bit her lip. Shook her head.
“I go with—”
“Come, now,” Frau Brocker said to him.
But he refused to let go of his Mutti. “Why not?” he sobbed.
“Because . . .” Gently, Frau Brocker pulled him away, lifted him into her wide arm, and kissed the tears on his cheeks. “Because Frau Abramowitz likes girls. Isn’t that silly?”
He squinted at Thekla, hatred in his eyes.
She winced. Offered quickly, “I’ll ask Frau Abramowitz.”
“You won’t do any such thing,” Mutti said. “You’re lucky I can bring you.”
“Lucky . . . ,” Elmar chanted and clapped his hands. “Lucky . . .”
*
Thekla brought Vati a dead mouse because she wanted him to feel the difference between the velvety belly and the harsh fur. She pried his fingers apart, set the mouse into his palms, took his thumb and rubbed it across the mouse. Tried to close his hand around it. And gradually, his fingers quivered. Found the difference.
“Don’t you put dead things into Vati’s hands.” Elmar pushed her away. “You’re like a cat. Carrying dead mice.” Big ears and pale stick-up hair. A prissy boy who would grow into a crude man. Who could not see that she was bringing Vati treasures.
This mouse.
Or a few grains of soil.
Soil that was different from soil in another area.
Grasses.
A thistle.
Opening Vati up. Teaching him through touch.
But Elmar yelled at her. “Touching dead things! You’ll turn blue.”
“And then you die,” Dietrich said.
There was nothing that felt like the belly of a mouse. Vati understood.
Frau Abramowitz would understand, too. She would say, “What a good teacher you are, Thekla.”
But Elmar said, “Wash your hands, Thekla.”
Tuesday, February 27, 1934
Chapter 20
IMAGINE FORTY DAYS of rain,” Thekla says to her students. “That’s what Noah and his family had.”
“That’s why he built the ark,” Eckart says.
“That’s true. Now if we had forty days of rain, what would you bring along?”
Her boys don’t even mention what-to-bring, go right into whom-to-bring. Or rather, whom-not-to-bring.
“If we take everyone, we’ll sink,” says Walter.
Andreas Beil nods. “The Führer won’t let any Jews on the ark.”
Thekla feels queasy. This’s not what I mean. This morning when she arrived at school, Sister Mäuschen, timid and gray-skinned, was scurrying past the St. Christopher statue at the far end of the corridor. Mäuschen. Little Mouse. So shy and fast and little, it might vanish if you came too close. As she did this morning, vanish, just as Thekla got close enough to see that she’d put up a poster for a film on Rassenreinheit—racial purity, one of those wretched films that claimed Jews were filthy in their moral and physical habits. Infuriating, having to watch another film like this. Humiliating, having to hold back what you really thought.
Several boys are talking about a flag with a swastika for their ark.
“Actually,” the teacher explains, “the swastika is an ancient symbol that means sun and life and luck . . . and power.”
“How ancient?” Franz wants to know.
“At least three thousand years. It was used by different races. In India and in China and in Troy and—”
Andreas shakes his head. “It’s just for the Aryan race. That’s what the Führer says.”
She reminds herself that she can reach the most difficult students, that with every one of them there’s a different way of opening up. “On our next visit to the museum in Düsseldorf, we’ll research the swastika,” she tells Andreas. “We’ll start with some coins and pottery from Greece that have the swastika on them.”
*
Otto raises his hand. “With all the animals on the ark, there should be frogs, too.”
“Absolutely.” She walks to the piano, leans across the frog house to watch Icarus.
Otto nudges Heinz. “We can take Icarus.”
“Icarus,” Heinz says. “Yes.”
It strikes the teacher that Otto seems more grown-up than the other boys, more of a man already. That’s probably why they sometimes look to him for direction.
“But Icarus doesn’t need the ark,” Eckart says. “He can swim.”
“Yes,” Otto says, “but we need him.”
“Why?”
“Remember, two of each animal on the ark,” Otto says. “Besides, Icarus has become weak. And a flood is not the time to release him.”
The boys have talked about setting Icarus free in the moat that encircles the Sternburg, in the same spot where they found him, under the drawbridge. They’ve talked about having waited too long. But they want to believe that, come summer, Icarus will be stronger again; his tongue will once again dart for the flies that taunt him by standing still in the air, wings humming until, with a sudden jolt, they’ll dodge Icarus just as he is about to leap and snatch them.
“From the day we caught him,” the teacher says, “we’ve planned to release him. But in the meantime we’ve learned about the risk of removing an animal from its habitat.” She motions for her boys to come close. “How do we weigh that then—the risk to him versus the learning it brings us?”
As the boys crowd around the glass house, Icarus squeezes himself between two cushions of moss.
“But we didn’t know about the risk,” Richard says.
“Not when we caught Icarus,” Walter adds.
She nods. Waits.
“But what if finding that out is part of learning, too?” Eckart asks.
“More flies,” Heinz says quietly.
“Yes,” Otto says, “we can feed Icarus more flies. Maybe then it is not too late for him.”
Andreas says, “I found a sack with new—”
But Richard interrupts him. “When can we release Icarus?”
“Come spring we will.” T
he teacher sits down at the piano and plays the first melody that comes to her, Schumann’s rendition of Eichendorff’s poem, “Der Frohe Wandersmann”—“The Happy Wanderer.” It’s one her boys learned from her, and they sing with her about the rivers and forests, larks and wind. Fräulein Siderova liked to say that, if you sang a poem, it planted itself inside you twice, so that you could recall it through melody and words.
*
“Roller skates.” Andreas’s voice is hopping with excitement. “The unknown benefactor left them for me. In a sack. On my front stoop.”
Suddenly her boys are talking all at once.
“The unknown benefactor left a big block of cheese in our kitchen,” Otto says.
“. . . a bicycle for my father,” Eckart is saying.
“Your manners,” the young teacher reminds them.
Bruno and Markus come from good families, but most of her boys she has to remind of their manners. You can absorb refinement only as a child. The Führer talks about bringing out the best in the youth of Germany, but he’ll never have that for himself. He may have learned how to thank others properly, how to eat with his fork in his left hand and his knife in his right, but it’s obvious he learned this as an adult.
Her boys nudge each other to be quiet, to wait for her to call on them.
She adjusts her scarf. Children like strong colors, and she always wears something bright for them, her yellow-and-blue scarf, say, or her green blouse. She enjoys dressing up for her boys, enjoys it when their mothers tell her the wildness in their sons has settled into thoughtfulness ever since she became their teacher.
“Yes, Franz?” she says.
“The unknown benefactor brought us three new blankets.”
Every few months, the Burgdorf Post runs another article about the unknown benefactor, whose identity is still a mystery despite two decades of gifts on people’s doorsteps or inside their homes. People agree it has to be someone from Burgdorf because these gifts are always what you need or hope for: coats and shoes in the proper sizes, a phonograph and records, medicine and food. And now roller skates for Andreas Beil, who will indeed become a policeman and—nine years from now—find himself devastated when it’s discovered that the vandal he’s shot for dismantling a Hitler monument, crusted with pigeon shit, has been the benefactor all along. Only in death will the identity become known.
Chapter 21
CAN I BRING my roller skates to school after lunch?” Andreas asks his teacher.
“Soon,” she tells him. “Once the sidewalks are clear again.”
She motions to Jochen Weskopp to present his butterfly collection to the class, and he unwraps three kitchen towels, holds up a frame with green felt backing, and explains about catching and mounting butterflies.
Last week Andreas brought a dozen pictures he’d drawn of policemen. The week before Bruno demonstrated chess moves on the rosewood chess set he’d inherited from his grandfather. Not quite what Sister Josefine envisioned when she suggested teachers ask their students to bring in items that related to the Great War. Thekla doesn’t rule out that one or two, indeed, may choose something a father or uncle stashed away from his days as a soldier, but it’s too soon to introduce these children to war.
It’s far more valuable for them to bring in items that matter to them, that excite them so much they want to tell the class about them. That’s how each boy learns from himself. That’s how they learn about one another. Thekla loves it when she can anchor knowledge inside them through their passions, instead of fighting their discouragement that they are ignorant, or that it’s hard to learn something new.
When she thanks Jochen, he’s pleased. Since Lent is on the curriculum, she’ll fit it in now, before today’s faculty meeting, so that—while her boys go home to eat lunch and recover from theories of sacrifice—she can report to her colleagues that she’s already taught Lent. Too many meetings. Evening meetings, too. But as a teacher you are a government employee, and it is wise to join the party, to be seen. Some parents have complained that their children don’t have enough time for play and being with their families.
Most of her colleagues can’t separate propaganda from truth, but Thekla knows the difference, knows that being true to yourself doesn’t necessarily mean you are truthful, knows how to use reverence—a hand to her throat, a deep sigh—during meetings to prove her loyalty. After all, she has felt that reverence as a child in church, the emotional pitch that proves your transformation. Easy enough to use that reverence in politics.
*
“Now, we still have our lesson on Lent,” she says.
Walter has his hand up.
“Yes, Walter?”
“Jesus started Lent.”
She nods. “He fasted in the desert for forty days in preparation for his death and resurrection. That’s why the church asks us to give up things we like for Lent.”
“Forty days and forty nights he fasted,” Walter reminds her. “That’s why we fast and take inventory of our sins.”
“Thank you.”
“In my family we give up second helpings for Lent,” says Wolfgang. Of course. One of the few families where second helpings are available. Because of his uncle’s barbershop.
“No applesauce yesterday,” Otto says.
Other boys report what they are giving up.
“No meat.”
“I only eat one egg a week, not two.”
“Marmalade.”
Thekla remembers a praline Frau Abramowitz slipped into her hand one Lent when she was four or five. Gold foil wrap. Inside nougat and chocolate with half a walnut on top. When Thekla said it was Lent, Frau Abramowitz said, “Don’t wait to live,” and folded Thekla’s fingers across the praline.
“If you break Lent, you get a tapeworm,” Andreas says.
“That is not true,” Richard says.
“It’s a superstition,” the teacher says.
Andreas shakes his head. “But it’s what my father says.”
“Another way of approaching Lent,” she says, “is that you don’t have to give up anything.”
Some frown at her; others lean forward.
“Instead you are learning how to wait for what you want, and that’s a good skill to have. Just remind yourself that you can have everything—only not right away. And that you’ll enjoy it more on Easter Sunday because you’ve waited for it.”
“Why is Easter on a different date every year?” Richard asks.
“It has to do with the moon. Easter is on the first Sunday after the first full moon after March twenty-first. Yes, Otto?”
“So the people who make the calendar start with Easter? And then they count back forty days to the first day of Lent?”
“Yes, and that’s Aschermittwoch—Ash Wednesday.”
“This year Aschermittwoch was early,” Eckart says. “That’s why Easter will be early, too.”
“And Palm Sunday, when Jesus made his triumphant entry into Jerusalem,” Walter says, excited to be talking about Jesus. “After Palm Sunday, the priests burn the palms and store the ashes for tracing the cross on our foreheads.”
*
“Next week,” the teacher says, “each of you will write an essay about the life of his namesake saint. When you research your saints, ask questions. Don’t expect to find out everything at once. Ask your parents, the priest, the sisters. Take notes. Especially if you think you already know, ask.” It’s what Herr Abramowitz used to tell her. “I learned that from a . . . family friend,” she adds. “An educated man who always encouraged me to ask questions.”
She gathers her notes, stops to salute when her students leave, a rush toward the door, toward home where their mothers or grandmothers are waiting for them with lunch.
Sobbing—
It makes her think of her little brother, sobbing before his first communion, terrified of touching the wafer with his teeth. “It’s a sin if you chew it. Herr Pastor Schüler said never ever let your teeth touch it.”
And she,
calming Dietrich. “When he puts it on your tongue, you pull it in without letting it touch your teeth.”
“But I’ll choke.”
“Just push it with your tongue to the roof of your mouth.” Showing him. Opening her mouth wide and wiggling her tongue. “Like this. Afterward you swallow it a bit at a time.” How she adored Dietrich back then.
He was so superstitious. Believed if he prayed for one hour without blinking, he’d have an apparition of the Blessed Mother, who’d bring him a cat that wouldn’t make him sick. He kept praying. But cats thickened his breath, made him cough. Elmar got sick from cats, too. But Thekla didn’t. Dietrich also believed that going into the synagogue or the Protestant church was a mortal sin. That’s why Thekla didn’t tell him when Herr Abramowitz took her inside the synagogue where the air was soft and cool. The day after the synagogue, she and Dietrich found a cat. The cat was drinking. Drinking steadily in the hot sun. Crouched by the blade of a fallen shovel, it was drinking from the water in that blade, its reflection surrounded by Dietrich’s reflection.
Sobbing—
Not Dietrich, no—
Someone in her classroom. She thought it was empty.
Bruno. Still at his desk. Sobbing, a quiet sobbing. When she takes his hands, he resists, stiffly. He has his father’s dainty hands. But on him they’re in proportion to his body. Cold, his hands. So cold.
She opens them. On his palms, half-moon impressions of his fingernails. “What’s wrong, Bruno?”
His lips are as pale as his face. He’s shaking.
“I’ll go with you to the nurse’s office,” she says.
He tries to speak.
“Bruno. Please tell me?”
He looks devastated, skin stretched, ears flat, as if standing in a strong wind.
“Did something happen?” Fear rises in her, and she takes his face between her hands. Her fingertips meet in back of his neck. His shorn hair feels like three-day beard fuzz where it ends above his soft winter-skin.
“I can’t live without the Führer,” he sobs.
