The Patron Saint of Pregnant Girls

by Ursula Hegi

  * * *

  The beekeeper, too, is taken by the wildness in Heike’s music, rushing ahead of her into brilliance. As she wraps herself around the cello, face dipping into the hollow between its neck and belly, I wonder if he understands he’ll never be as important to her as a cello. His eyes fill with tears—of relief? of exhilaration?—and he reaches for my wrist where it lies on my scarf. I keep my eyes on Heike, though my pulse thuds in my wrist, my throat. He gathers one edge of my shawl across our hands, links his fingers through mine. I’m astonished his skin is softer than mine.

  PART EIGHT

  Winter 1879–1880

  37

  Old Rifts Mend

  In November Kalle arrives early to meet with farmers about boarding Zirkus animals in their barns and sheds; with toymakers about repairing wagon wheels; with the blacksmith about shoeing horses and ponies. Old rifts mend once the Ludwig Zirkus winters over and people help care for animals they’ve only seen in parades and in the arena. They visit one another with tales of the ponies’ fancy footwork, say, or with worries about the lion whose scent agitates the cattle. Already he’s been relocated from the Knudsens’ barn to the Bauers’ goat shed where he has to crouch. Now the goats live in a barn with the Bauers’ cows; disoriented by the high rafters, they knock into each other, and bleat in that indignant voice only goats have.

  The Sisters invite the eight monkeys into their aviary, and even church families bring their children to see those monkeys swinging and eating and scratching where children are forbidden to scratch their own bodies. The children’s shrieking matches the monkeys’ shrieking, behavior not tolerated at home or at school; yet, at the aviary, their parents become lenient, wander into the lobby to show their children the exhibit of paintings and weavings by students and faculty. Some ask the Sisters if they’ll have another recital.

  Such excess of good will causes church people to nod greetings toward St. Margaret Girls; causes the blacksmith’s wife to rip the double seams of her husband’s uniform from the German-Danish War, turn the blue fabric inside out, and sew a skirt and fitted jackets for Hedda who lives with her baby above the smithy.

  Through much of the winter the ground will stay muddy because all those hooves won’t let it freeze; no matter how carefully people will wipe their shoes, they’ll drag dirt into houses and churches, especially into school where the children will study the biology of animals.

  * * *

  You map out your lives with your children. Immerse yourselves in preparations that become as immediate as your lives in your farmhouse on the land side of the dike. And though you cannot reach your three oldest—not yet, not yet—you can keep your love for them tucked away, your worries, too. Until you see them again. And you feel calm. Ready for the first high tide after the Schwarze Sonne when you’ll row out and bring them home. Rungholt has entered your souls: more vibrant now its colors; more defined its structures; while the familiar landscape of Nordstrand is blurring.

  Kalle trusts his dory. He and the beekeeper built theirs together.

  “I’ll chart the location, the exact location above and around Rungholt.”

  Once the boat is centered above the island, you’ll wait for it to rise. Reveal its point of entry.

  “We’ll only see it if we’re right there,” Lotte says.

  “If we’re too close to the rim, we’ll get sucked into the waters that pour from the edges of Rungholt.”

  “Like waterfalls.”

  You will enter the island together and bring your children back home. This is how it will be.

  Every day Kalle stops by his boat, checks oars and oar locks, checks its flat bottom, its high bow that points in the direction of Rungholt, and proclaims it safe for his entire family. It’s a fine boat. To test their plan they row out while Wilhelm plays with his wooden zebra and his wooden monkey on the bottom boards, listens closely.

  Vati says, “We know where to wait. Above the center when the island emerges.”

  Mutti says, “Careful with what you say. Wilhelm understands too much.”

  Vati lowers his voice, but Wilhelm still hears him say, “In that lull just before the tides reverse.”

  Mutti says, “I wish it could be today.”

  Wilhelm’s zebra walks up Vati’s leg.

  Vati says, “The time is not right. The Schwarze Sonne hasn’t come back.”

  “We cannot tell others,” Mutti whispers.

  “This is just for you and for me.”

  Wilhelm’s zebra bites Vati’s leg.

  “And for the children. Who do you think will greet us?”

  “Hannelore.”

  “Ja. Or Martin.”

  Wilhelm’s monkey jumps. Up and down. “Sketch, Vati?”

  “Bärbel will try to run ahead of them, forgetting she is still little,” Vati says. “Always so surprised when Hannelore and Martin pass her.”

  “Maybe Hannelore won’t like being lifted up. Too old for that.”

  “Then I’ll kneel in front of her and hold her.” Kalle closes his eyes, suffused with love for his Hannelore as he holds her in his arms; but when he opens his eyes, Wilhelm’s face bobs in front of his, lips puckered around his thumb.

  Voice muffled. “Sketch, Vati?”

  “Not today. Too many chores.”

  That quick glaze of hurt.

  “But soon,” Kalle says.

  He decides he won’t make Wilhelm wait as he did with Hannelore, even after she turned six and begged him to teach her. He wishes he’d shown her to lean the weight of her hand into a pencil stroke; how to play with the fluidity of a stroke: where it lies heavily on the paper, widening; where it is light and narrow. And then of course the spaces left bare to suggest the body, motion. But there will be time for that now. And he’ll start with Wilhelm.

  * * *

  As they head back to their house, he says, “Do you know that animals are never without motion? Even while they sleep. A tiger about to wake up. A bird about to catch a fish. A monkey about to…”

  “Leap!”

  “Good.” Kalle eases the thumb from his son’s mouth. “What other animals can you think of?”

  Shadow of stork on steeple … Wilhelm claps his hands. “Stork about.”

  “About to eat?”

  “Fly!”

  “Something is always about to change.” Kalle squats next to him, faces at the same level. How wasteful he’s been with his son’s devotion. How afraid of failing him. He did not keep his other children safe. What chance does his youngest have? “Would you like me to carve a stork for you?”

  Wilhelm nods.

  “Shall I carve it flying?”

  Wilhelm nods.

  “Or standing on one leg?”

  Wilhelm raises one knee—stork I am stork—teeters on the other leg.

  Kalle catches him before he can fall, steadies him by his skinny shoulders, feels the quiver in his son’s bones. And tears up. “We’ll draw it together.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Chores.”

  “Is that how I answer you? Thank you for reminding me. I want to stop with chores and sketch with you. Now. Let’s find some storks.”

  Storks on steeples. Storks in wet meadows. Ruts of water. Wilhelm is cold, scarf dragging. Clack-clack of storks. Long red beaks. Long red legs.

  Vati ties scarf around Wilhelm’s neck. Says, “The knot is in back so you can’t undo it.”

  Clack-clack. Vati crouches. Draws lines in mud. Muddy fingers. Draws storks on steeple. “Soon, you’ll be able to draw birds in motion, Wilhelm. Other animals too. If you imagine the animal the moment before it moves, you know the bones beneath the feathers or the fur … even the muscles and the blood vessels. You can teach yourself to see.”

  Wilhelm frowns.

  “By looking … By imagining. I’ll show you how.” Kalle tugs Wilhelm’s scarf over his mouth. “Hold on to my sleeve so you won’t fly off.”

  “I can fly.”

 
“I know you can fly. Just don’t leave me behind.”

  Wilhelm breathes warm through his scarf. Cold where his nose drips. Snot icicles hurrah.

  * * *

  In the houses of others they come across Sister Hildegunde’s paintings, expanses of green and yellow and blue that can hurt your eyes if you forget to blink. Wind hunts the clouds—gray clouds, purple clouds, pink clouds—across endless skies. And windmills. Windmills. So much land and so few houses in that flat, flat landscape, heartbreakingly beautiful.

  Sister Hildegunde gives breath to the landscape Kalle longs for while on the road: winds ripple fields of grasses and fields of rapeseed and fields of wildflowers as if they’re waves. The slopes of dikes flecked with sheep: most white; a few black. Yet, when he’s on Nordstrand, Kalle longs for the Ludwig Zirkus; and gradually, the Zirkus makes it into Sister Hildegunde’s paintings as if summoned by Kalle’s longing. Like a girl in her joy, Sister paints from the angle of her childhood—radiant animals and performers—summoning the magic and colors that arise from what you conjure and give credence to.

  38

  Sabine and Lotte

  I confide in Lotte. Wish I hadn’t confided. Wish I could ask her if I stop by her door too often. Not often enough. If I ask her invasive questions. If I don’t ask her enough about herself.

  Luzia would know. She’d tell me, “You’re so used to starting anew each week in another place that you try too hard with Lotte. You’re both on Nordstrand to stay, neighbors, and you don’t have to rush. Lotte is not going away.”

  How I miss Luzia.

  Once again I’m at Lotte’s door.

  “How do you go on after—”

  Lotte blinks.

  “I shouldn’t ask.”

  “I saw you at dusk. On the dike. You stood close to the beekeeper…”

  Claws. Lotte has claws, I think. That’s how she goes on. She won’t say anything she doesn’t want to say. And I’m glad for her.

  “… the kind of close that reveals—”

  But I know what she stopped herself from saying: that reveals your bodies want to couple. I know because it’s true and because I can tell with others—by the distance between their bodies, the charge between them—if they’ve slept together or if they want to sleep together or if they haven’t caressed one another for years.

  “People talk,” Lotte warns.

  I shrug.

  “You must be discreet. For your daughter’s sake.”

  Between Luzia and Oliver that charge is almost constant, stronger than at their wedding two decades ago.

  I rush to their wagon first, Heike and Tilli and Wilhelm trailing along. With Pia they play family—Mutti und Vati and their son and their tiny daughter, their favorite game because Pia is little forever.

  Except they must not tell her that, Pia’s father says. “It will make her sad. She doesn’t know yet.”

  Luzia paints butterflies on their cheeks and foreheads.

  When we leave their wagon, Pia comes along. Heike wants to carry her on her hip but Tilli won’t allow that. Whispers that Pia’s legs are too short for that. So Pia walks between Heike and Wilhelm, her hands in theirs, and hiccups with delight.

  * * *

  At Herr Ludwig’s wagon Heike has to knock twice, and when he calls for her to come in, his voice flutters. She pats his skinny arm that make his hands seem huge. Crusty specks on his wrists.

  “Heike,” he says to Pia. “My dear Heike. Will you play the cello for me?”

  “Not Heike.” Pia shakes her head.

  Heike doesn’t know what to tell him. If she offers to play, he’ll get embarrassed that he called Pia by the wrong name.

  “Pia is too little for the cello—” Tilli starts.

  But Heike interrupts. “She means too young. I can play the cello for you.”

  “Every rehearsal,” Herr Ludwig reminds Pia.

  On the way out Heike whispers to Pia that she’ll share the name Heike with her. “But just for Herr Ludwig.”

  At the rehearsal they perch on hay bales, clap and holler just as real audiences will clap and holler. The Whirling Nowack Cousins are still amazingly agile, slower but more precise, a choreography that lingers on the play of muscles in their arms and legs, demonstrates the confidence of their bodies.

  “Pia Pia! Look—” Wilhelm yells as Oliver rises and spreads his arms and legs. “Your Vati flies!”

  Pia paddles the air with her hands to reach her Vati.

  “But your Vati will come back to you,” Heike assures her.

  Just before Pia’s Vati lowers himself to the ground, he stretches up, bends at the waist, then grasps the ankles of Hans-Jürgen. Together The Whirling Nowack Cousins flip into a kneeling stance, heads thrown back, throats arched.

  Pia clambers across Heike to sit on Kalle’s knees.

  And he whispers to her his silent chant, silent no more, “You are part of my story … And I’m part of your story.”

  Her gaze is on him.

  So is Wilhelm’s.

  Kalle reaches for his son, pulls him up next to her. Pia, so fierce while Wilhelm is cautious. Black hair and olive skin while his son’s hair and skin are pale. “Your story, too, Wilhelm,” he says. “I’m part of that and you’re part of my story.”

  * * *

  In the Whirling Nowacks’ wagon, Silvio stretches out on the bed and Hans-Jürgen strokes his lean face as he listens to how Silvio used to adore his parents when he was just with one of them.

  “But not when they were together with me the only spectator to their melodrama. The promises and the love and the fights and the hurling and the passion.”

  “Performing?”

  “Like being in the arena with a huge audience.”

  “You think he knew about you all along?”

  “I don’t know. He’s never said anything like that before.”

  “Maybe he knew before you knew.”

  “Then why all that matchmaking with Sabine and me?”

  “He wants her to be his family, her and the little girl. But he can have that without turning you into her father.”

  “And now he’s losing more of himself every day.”

  Hans-Jürgen traces Silvio’s hairline, the peak just off-center, and lets his hand be caught.

  “Why are you so … sweet to me?” Silvio asks.

  “We could fight?”

  “Too easy.”

  “Lots of experience, though.” Hans-Jürgen smiles with that lovely laziness that comes before embracing. “Now?”

  Now—

  * * *

  “They fuss over him like he’s their child,” says the Cook, but she fusses just as much, makes Vanillepudding for the old man who has trouble eating and forgets her name.

  Most of his hair has fallen out, and his flat ears have grown huge. If you were to see his face for the first time, you wouldn’t know if he’s a man or woman. Along the route, people hear crying from the biggest wagon where he lies in bed, curved into himself as he waits to sleep in the arms of Silvio or Hans-Jürgen. When he confesses that he didn’t like him at first, Hans-Jürgen says it’s like that for most people and massages the old man’s shoulders.

  For the parades, Silvio organizes the animals in the same order his father used to: Egypt’s cage is in the last wagon, the first to be loaded, the last to unload, so that the smaller animals don’t have to be led through Egypt’s wagon. Still, some get spooked by his big-cat smell that lingers when they return to their cages.

  When Silvio offers Hans-Jürgen the job of ringmaster, Hans-Jürgen says he’d rather be the ringmaster’s assistant. He suggests carrying Herr Ludwig into the arena on a gold-painted throne, still the official ringmaster in top hat and tuxedo, the whip across his knees.

  “To represent the magic,” he says.

  “Even if he falls asleep on his throne?”

  “He is the magic. Especially if he falls asleep on his throne.”

  39

  To Feel Your Skin Despite the
Layers of Our Habits

  The marble stairs are still there, but the bishop’s peacocks are long dead—frozen in snow or boiled in stew—and the cries, laughter, too, that you hear come from new babies, and from older children who still live at the St. Margaret Home. Wilhelm loves to visit the old Sisters. Loves to scramble up those stairs, no matter if with Tilli or his mother, then slide down on his rump to the babies—down and up again and down and up again—recognizing the faces of the old in the babies, and the faces of the babies in the old. Faces alike. Shapes, too.

  Some days he gets to help push a wheelchair with an old Sister along the corridor of the retirement wing with the vinegar smell of sweaty illness. When he feeds the rabbits and lovey-birds, even the forgetful Sisters turn their heads to follow the movements of their animals, and their faces are no longer so tired.

  * * *

  Sister Ida sleeps a lot, clutching her rosary; but as soon as she wakens, the rosary hops through her fingers, hour after hour, bead after bead of prayer, each decade a sorrowful mystery: the agony in the garden, the scourging at the pillar, the crowning with thorns, the carrying of the cross, and the death of Christ on that cross. Then the rosary hops all over again.

  Sister Ida can no longer speak, something with her throat no Doktor can diagnose, though Sister Konstanze traces its beginning to the night Sister Ida first lost her voice to Sister Hildegunde. But Sister Ida thinks constantly, especially about the axis, the St. Margaret Home as the axis, with Sisters and Girls and babies revolving around this axis. On Sister Ida’s birthday the midwife gives her a little chalkboard to write words and sentences.