Ursula Hegi The Burgdorf Cycle Boxed Set: Floating in My Mother's Palm, Stones from the River, The Vision of Emma Blau. Children and Fire

by Hegi, Ursula

  Somehow—certainly not by intent, Trudi figured—Eva ended up sitting next to her, her skirt spread around her. Trudi adjusted her skirt to fall just like that. Two servants with starched aprons passed baskets with strawberries and vanilla wafers, and as the sounds of the piano drifted toward the children, they settled back into the fresh grass—even those who usually found it difficult to sit still—and let the magic of the piano fuse with the fragrant air and with that sense of festivity that comes with special occasions. They wore their Sunday clothes: the girls in smocked or embroidered dresses; the boys in suits with short pants and knee socks. The boys’ hair had been combed wet, and you could see the straight parts and the ridges the combs had left; the girls’ hair was in pigtails or braids that had been coiled above their ears or wound around their heads.

  Georg Weiler was waving his hands like a conductor, and Helga Stamm began to wave her hands like that, too. Regular-size girls, Trudi was certain, had it easy, and she envied them, especially poor girls like Helga because the conspicuous line of her let-down hem announced to all of the world that this girl was growing.

  The glow of the candles made it seem as if Fräulein Birnsteig were outside with her listeners. People said about her that she believed in her dreams, that she wrote them down and let them determine her decisions. Once, she had canceled a concert tour to America because she’d dreamed that the ship, which was to take her there, had sunk. Another time she had been in Hamburg and had brought a beggar woman home to live with her because she’d recognized the woman’s features from a dream. In the dream, the beggar had been her sister. She still lived with the pianist and kept house for her, making sure Fräulein Birnsteig had absolute solitude during the long hours she practiced the piano.

  As the music filled Trudi, it carried the crying of infants from some pocket of time far away; the high, swollen bellies of girls; the staccato of boots against marble floors. She didn’t know what any of it meant, only that it was already there—waiting in its own time, moving through her in a gust of fear. Quickly, she pressed her eyes shut, then opened them again to look at the stars that were beginning to suck the dark from the sky.

  A hand—Eva’s hand—touched her hair, drew the fear from her heart. Fingers twirled the ends of Trudi’s pigtails to form curls, combed through them as if no one else were there. Mute with sudden bliss, Trudi glanced at her friend, but Eva’s eyes were on the pianist as though unaware of the gift she was bestowing, and Trudi understood that the love she felt meant far more to her than to Eva. Already she sensed that this was love at its purest. She tilted her head, glad that her hair was beautiful as its fine, thick texture grazed her neck and slid through Eva’s fingers. The scent of fresh grass and ancient lilac bushes was overpowering, and she wanted to cry when Eva took her hand away, but it felt as though the music continued to touch her hair.

  But the day after the concert, children began to shun Eva in school. Eyes red and averted, she stayed away from Trudi, who took out her mother’s scarves again and tightened them around her head at night to keep it from growing even larger. In the mornings her temples would ache and her jaw would feel stiff.

  She decided to stop taking piano lessons since she would never be good enough to be Fräulein Birnsteig’s protégé. Maybe Robert could study with the pianist, who’d be sure to choose him if he lived in Burgdorf. Trudi wrote him a letter, telling him about the pianist, and her father promised to mail it the next day, together with two pictures she’d drawn: one of Robert sitting next to the pianist, the other of herself and her father and her dog on a big ship bound for America.

  From the church library she borrowed eight picture books and read them in one day, all along thinking of Eva. Together with Frau Abramowitz, she brought Streuselkuchen to the butcher’s mother-in-law, who’d broken her hip. Propped up on the living-room sofa, the old woman didn’t complain about her pain, only about her inability to get up and do her housework. Behind her glasses, her eyes looked trapped as if she felt confined inside her body. She wore a pink cardigan above her nightgown, and was knitting another cardigan—brown, for her grandson, Anton.

  When Eva resumed her visits to the pay-library two weeks after the concert, Trudi didn’t show how glad she was to have her back. Eva seemed less cautious about being seen with her, and their walks through the neighborhood began to include other streets, even walks to the Rhein, where Seehund chased bees in the meadow. He had grown, and when he stood between the girls, his head reached Trudi’s shoulder and Eva’s waist.

  In almost all families only the girls had to help with the housework, including shining their fathers’ and brothers’ shoes, but Eva’s family distributed chores. Except for her father, everyone helped with the cleaning and cooking after the half-day maid had left, chores which—some of the old women said—were not suitable for boys.

  Eva’s seventh birthday was on a Monday, and her father arose from his invalid’s bed in the afternoon. He surprised Trudi by opening the door for her when she arrived with her official present—a harmonica in a velvet case. Though she hadn’t spoken to Herr Rosen before, he knew her name and told her that her father was a fine man. He worked hard for each breath, and his voice was as spongy as his body. When she followed his bulk into the dining room, he walked gingerly as if stepping on moss, making her feel that the floor beneath her feet was not nearly as steady as when she’d been in Eva’s house before. She felt conspicuous in the yellow party dress her father had bought her from the little girls’ rack at Mahler’s department store in Düsseldorf.

  Framed oil paintings of elegant women and somber men hung on the walls, and the chairs had carved armrests. Even though the leaded windows were closed—to keep cats out, Trudi figured—the rooms were saturated with light because the inside doors had panels of frosty glass, engraved with intricate flowers. The bird that Seehund had caught in the high grass nearly a year ago sat stuffed on a shelf in a nest, its beak tilted up, its ruby-red chest fluffed forever.

  While Eva’s mother drove to the Kaisershafen Gasthaus, Eva’s father dozed in the passenger seat, his face and hands honey brown from the sun. But once they arrived, he was the one to request a table on the terrace and to order lemonade and Erdbeertorte mit Sahne— strawberry tart with whipped cream—for everyone. His legs were so bloated that he had to sit with them apart, and his stomach rested on his knees like a sleeping child. One of Eva’s brothers had brought his guitar along, and they all sang the birthday song for her, “Hoch soll sie leben, drei mal hoch.…”—“High shall she live, three times high.…”

  Eva’s mother wore her pearls and a chic little cap. Below them the Rhein flowed in rich, green waves, and in the shimmering heat the trees across the river seemed to float above the ground. A stork flew past the terrace, heading in the direction of town, and a white excursion boat struggled against the current so slowly that it barely seemed to budge.

  While Eva and Trudi took turns on her harmonica, her brothers rolled cardboard coasters across the tablecloth. Herr Rosen’s face glowed with moisture, and when Frau Doktor Rosen looked at him, Trudi saw the same expression with which her father used to watch her mother—that look of concern and fear and pity—and she resolved to never let anyone look at her like that.

  On the drive home, Eva’s oldest brother got sick from drinking too much lemonade, and they stopped the car just in time for him to stagger out and vomit by the side of the road. In front of Eva’s house, two Buttgereit girls stood waiting, and the Frau Doktor grabbed her black doctor’s bag, turned the car around, and drove the girls to their farm.

  The timing for Eva’s second present couldn’t have been better because Trudi’s father had his chess club meeting that evening. As soon as it was dark, Trudi rolled two cigarettes in the pay-library and sneaked out to meet Eva behind the church. In the bushes outside the wall of the rectory, they took their first puffs, grimacing and coughing, and when they heard a door slam at a distance, they both tossed their cigarettes across the wall. All that night, Tr
udi lay awake, worried the rectory and church would burst into fire. She and Eva would burn in hell. But what if Catholics and Jews didn’t go to the same hell? As she promised Jesus to go to church every day for an entire year—if only he prevented the fire—she already saw herself entering the church and crossing herself with cold holy water.

  She was certain her prayers had been granted when the only light that came into her window was that of dawn. After breakfast she heard from Frau Blau that the Frau Doktor had stayed at the Buttgereits’ house all night to deliver their tenth child. “A boy, imagine,” Frau Blau said, and Trudi told her that—from the terrace of the Kaisershafen Gasthaus—she’d seen the stork who’d brought the baby.

  Across town, Frau Buttgereit raised herself on her elbows and, cautiously, peered at the infant who slept in the cradle by her bed. After nine daughters, she had no longer hoped for a son, and when the child, still covered with her blood, had been handed to her, he’d seemed like some other woman’s child—not only because his limbs were more delicate than those of her girls, but because she hadn’t felt the resignation that had begun with the birth of her third daughter and had increased with each daughter since.

  “An heir for the farm,” her husband declared when he bought a box of cigars from Leo Montag.

  “An heir for the farm,” he announced when he distributed the cigars to the men at his Stammtisch.

  Sometimes Trudi and Eva brought milk cans along on their walks to the river, swinging them by their handles as they walked past the wheat fields to fetch milk or eggs at the Braunmeiers’ farm on their way home.

  Frau Braunmeier would wait on them, the youngest child propped on her hip as her chapped hands counted their money. She’d come from a poor Protestant family in Krefeld, Trudi had heard, and she’d converted to Catholicism in order to marry into the Braunmeier money; yet, the irony was that her husband made her live with him in deeper poverty than she’d ever known. While the barn was huge and well maintained, the family lived in drafty rooms filled with shabby furniture, wore mended clothes, and subsisted on their farm products that were no longer fit for sale—milk about to curdle, bruised peaches, eggs that had lost their freshness.

  One afternoon, when Trudi and Eva entered the gate of the Braunmeiers’ farm, Hans-Jürgen jumped from behind the clotheslines where threadbare bed sheets were hung to dry. Wind rippled the sheets and flattened the leaves of the gooseberry bushes; it fanned Hans-Jürgen’s curls from his forehead as he blocked the girls’ way to the house.

  “We have new kittens. You want to see?” His eyes glittered. “They’re in the barn.”

  Eva reached for her throat. Trudi hesitated. Everyone knew that children were not allowed inside the barn, but she’d sneaked in once before while her father had bought eggs from Frau Braunmeier. Hans-Jürgen and two of his friends had crouched in the hay loft and hissed at her to go away, but she’d stayed, just to get back at them for not wanting her there.

  “You can’t make me leave,” she’d said, her heart pulsing so hard in her ears that she could barely hear her own words, and the only thing that had kept her from running away had been the knowledge that—if she told on him—his mother would punish him for being inside the barn.

  But this time Hans-Jürgen was asking her to stay. He even wanted to show her his kittens. “Come on,” he urged her and rolled his eyes, imitating her fish mouth from school, until she had to laugh and walked with him to the arched barn door, Eva and Seehund close behind her.

  “Your dog has to stay outside.” Deftly, he tied Seehund to a stake next to the long trough. “Down, boy,” he said and patted Seehund’s rear. His eyes darted toward the house. “No one is allowed in the barn,” he said in an important voice

  “I want to go home,” Eva said, her back and neck even straighter than usual.

  “Goose.” He opened the barn door.

  It was almost like a church inside—as quiet and as hollow and as big. And since it was forbidden to be there, it was even more exciting. Trudi pulled Eva along by her hand as she followed Hans-Jürgen past the row of cow rumps toward the back of the barn. Behind a wooden partition lay a fat gray cat in a nest of clean straw, encircled by a litter of kittens.

  Trudi squatted down and stroked the cat’s back. Eva stepped closer, her expression a mix of curiosity and caution.

  “You want to hold a kitten?” Hans-Jürgen offered.

  Eva nodded.

  “Here.” He reached for a striped kitten, but the cat snarled. One rapid paw darted out and scratched his wrist. He cried out and turned his face from the girls. With one foot he pushed the cat aside and snatched something fuzzy from where she’d lain, before she could spread herself across the remaining small shapes again, her eyes like embers.

  Trudi wanted to console the cat, but she was afraid of frightening her even more. “Put the kitten back,” she said.

  He hid it against the front of his faded shirt. “What kitten?”

  “The kitten you took,” Eva said.

  “It’s not even a kitten,” he said. “It’s a mole. A blind mole, see?” He held it toward Trudi, snatching it away before she could get it, and it was then that Trudi saw a rage in him that she recognized, a rage that she, too, had felt at times, the rage to destroy, and she shuddered.

  “Put it back,” she ordered though she knew it was too late.

  He laughed. “And now—now it’s a bird. See?”

  Holding the kitten by its tail, he whirled. Eva wailed, a long keening sound that echoed through the barn, while Trudi tried to hang on his arm. But he kept whirling, faster, the striped kitten flapping at the end of his outstretched arm, faster even, his face oddly illuminated like the faces of saints while they’re performing miracles. His fist opened and, while he kept whirling as though unable to stop himself, the kitten soared in a high arc toward the farthest wall, where its tiny body made an amazingly loud thud before it plummeted to the ground.

  Eva stopped screaming and stood very still, both hands clasped across her mouth, but Trudi ran toward the kitten. Despite her horror, she already could feel the words she would use to describe to Sister Elisabeth and to her father how limp and sticky the kitten felt in her hands. She would tell them about the blood that seeped from its mouth, about its eyes that were dull as if covered by a bride’s veil. And she would remember those eyes, just as she would remember the rapid shadow of panic that passed across Hans-Jürgen’s face the following morning when he was called to the front of the class for twenty lashes with Sister Elisabeth’s wooden ruler. His back to her, he stood in the corner for one hour, and she felt certain that, even if she were sent to the other corner, he would not acknowledge her.

  That Sunday, Herr Pastor Schüler spoke with Herr Braunmeier after church, and Monday morning Hans-Jürgen arrived in school with new bruises on his face and arms. His eyes were sullen, but once, when Trudi caught him glancing at her, she saw the flicker of revenge in his pupils. Though her hair started hurting, she forced herself to keep her eyes steady on his until he was the one to look away.

  “Keep your window open tonight,” she hissed as she passed his desk on her way out of class.

  He stood up, his shoulders and face above her, and she could see into the dark cavities of his nostrils. His hands rose along his sides as if to seize her and swing her around like that kitten.

  “Hans-Jürgen!” Sister Elisabeth said sternly. Though she wasn’t old, she walked with a cane.

  Hans-Jürgen grabbed his satchel and ran from the room.

  “What did you tell him?” Eva wanted to know when she appeared at the pay-library with a bone for Seehund.

  “To keep his window open. So the mother cat can come into his room and lie on his throat.”

  Eva shivered. “And he will die a terrible death.”

  “He will fight for each breath.”

  “But the mother cat won’t get off him.”

  “Not even when he screams.”

  Their eyes fused as if in a promise, and th
ey each let out a deep breath.

  “Not even then.”

  In preparation for first communion, Sister Elisabeth gave each child a rosary and demonstrated how you started the rosary by blessing yourself with the cross at the end of the little tail. Then you said the Apostles’ Creed, one Our Father, three Hail Marys, one Our Father, and—at the very end—Hail Holy Queen.

  “Your rosary has five decades with ten Hail Marys and one Our Father,” Sister Elisabeth explained. “On these rosaries, each decade is a separate color so you can pray for the conversion of continents: black, of course, is for Africa; yellow for Asia; red for Russia; green for South America; and blue for Australia.”

  “Can blue be for the Arctic?” Hans-Jürgen Braunmeier asked.

  “The Arctic doesn’t count. Only penguins live there.”

  Hilde Sommer raised her hand. “Why can’t we pray for penguins?” The strong, heavy girl was new in town and had fainted twice, so far, in church from the scent of incense.

  The sister squeezed her lips shut, as usual when she got impatient, and when she opened them, she informed Hilde that, although there was nothing wrong with praying occasionally for animals, you only did so after you’d done all your praying for people. “Animals don’t have souls. Except maybe the donkey and ox who were in little Jesus’ manger.”

  “The sheep, too,” Paul Weinhart reminded her. His parents had lots of sheep on their farm.

  Sister Elisabeth nodded, a pained expression on her face as if already sorry she had ever mentioned animals at all. Her facial hair was colorless but thick above her upper lip.

  Trudi raised her hand, and when the sister called on her, she said, “If the red is for a continent, it can’t be for Russia.”

  The sister’s expression of discontent deepened.

  “My father was there in the war. It’s on the same continent with Germany.”