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

  “You better get some dry clothes on,” her father said and heated the bathroom stove for hot water even though it was not Saturday, and she didn’t refuse the bath because she didn’t know how to tell him that seeing the girl by the quarry already made her aglow with something wild and splendid deep within.

  Far into the night she awoke with a start and saw Jutta standing in the tree, rain shrouding her like a second skin. In the morning she found out from Emil Hesping that water was spouting from the bottom of the quarry hole, and when he took her and Frau Simon there in his car, Trudi stood beneath Jutta’s birch, watching the surface of the water rise and wishing the girl could see this with her. Yet, she had a feeling that Jutta already knew.

  By the end of that week, the water had cleared, and some of the older children were swimming in it. The following Monday, at the chess club, Leo told Klaus Malter about Trudi’s toothache. When the young dentist stopped by the pay-library the next morning to take her to his office, she protested.

  “It will go away.”

  But he insisted with a warmth that bewildered her.

  “I have to put these books back on the shelves and—”

  “I can do that,” her father said.

  Klaus Malter smiled as he situated her in his tilting metal-and-leather chair. “Another patient. I might survive after all in Burgdorf. Open up now.”

  “It’s already better.” She was glad she was wearing her most recent Sunday dress, the green gabardine with the pointed lace collar that she’d rotated into weekday use only the month before when she’d finished sewing her newest outfit.

  “At least let me take one look at your tooth.”

  As he leaned forward to peer into her mouth, she felt the starched sleeve of his white jacket against her shoulder. A medicine smell clung to his hands and to the metal tools that probed her molar and gums. She wanted to close her lips, wanted to keep him from thinking that she longed for him to fill her mouth once more with his tongue, wanted to get it over—that moment when he’d send her home because there was nothing wrong with her tooth. If only she’d gone to Herr Doktor Beck instead.

  “You shouldn’t have waited so long,” he said. “This is pretty serious.”

  She tried to swallow.

  “Keep it open,” he reminded her as he started to drill. His hands were steady, his eyes alert. His beard was as dense and curly as the triangle of hair that grew low on her body where her thighs fused with her torso. His skin was fairer than hers—as if he hadn’t been in the sun all summer—and a faint spray of freckles made his nose look darker than the rest of his dear face.

  She barely felt the drill as she pictured herself telling her customers what a fine dentist Klaus was—words that would carry far more influence now that she’d become one of his patients. “He has gentle hands” she would say. “He doesn’t have hairs sprouting from his nose like Dr. Beck.”

  Glad that she’d come to his office after all, she watched his face, his frown of concentration; yet, at the same time, she felt sad knowing that, soon, she would no longer be with him. And all along he kept drilling deeper, a low rumbling that made her jaw, her head, her entire body vibrate.

  If only that drilling would last so that she could stay here, free to look into his eyes and feel the skin of his hands on her face. If only she were beautiful. If only she’d attended the Gymnasium and gone on to study medicine or law—anything that would have spanned the gap between their classes and brought her the acceptance of his family. He had told her about his annual family reunions at the Kaisershafen Gasthaus, about his mother who was a brilliant professor, about his refined aunts and successful uncles, about relatives who traveled to those reunions from as far away as München and Bremen.… As Trudi imagined herself entering the restaurant with Klaus, wearing a pale gray silk suit with pearl buttons, she had to squeeze her eyes shut at the display of loathing in his relatives’ faces.

  Abruptly, the quiver of the drill ceased. “Trudi? Did I hurt you?”

  She felt as though her body lay sprawled out on the chair, there for him to inspect, squat and ugly like a bug flattened by a magnifying glass. Her tongue found the hole he’d drilled into her molar—a hole big enough for one’s entire world to disappear—and she swallowed the taste of copper and charred bone and wished she could swallow herself and vanish into that abyss.

  “Trudi!” His hand shook her shoulder.

  It would serve him right if she died right here in his chair. The scandal of it! Surely, he’d never have another patient after that. “God knows how far he drilled into Trudi Montag” people would say at her funeral. Those who had been Klaus Malter’s patients would cross themselves and light candles of gratitude to St. Appolonia, the patron saint of dentists, who’d leapt into a fire after her teeth had been yanked out during her torture. Klaus would have to leave town—no, the country, because newspapers as far away as Berlin and München would carry headlines: Red-haired dentist kills patient.… Dentist does away with young woman after kissing her.… But maybe St. Appolonia wasn’t the right saint to pray to. She’d be the one to protect the dentist, not the patients. Who was the patron saint of patients? St. Margaret, who’d been tortured, imprisoned, swallowed by the devil disguised as a dragon? No, St. Margaret was only the patron saint of pregnant women—one saint Trudi would not need, judging from the way Klaus had evaded her ever since that kiss.

  “Please, Trudi—”

  It seemed ironic that her womb would shed blood every month, that she shared that experience with other young women when the rest of their lives were so unlike.

  “Trudi!”

  Reluctantly, she opened her eyes. He was bending over her, lips parted as though he’d forgotten to breathe. His teeth were exceptionally white and even. She found herself wondering who his dentist was.

  “How are you feeling, Trudi?”

  Already she could see the measured man he would settle into, a man who would look with amazement at his younger self. The older Klaus Malter would never kiss a Zwerg woman or whirl her around in an endless dance. The older Klaus Malter would find himself a wife who’d fit into his competent life.

  “I was afraid you’d passed out on me.”

  “Maybe the women in your family pass out.” She laughed to keep him from noticing her sudden anger. “Obviously, I am not refined enough for that.” Stop it, she told herself, he doesn’t even know you’ve been to his family reunion and back. Yet, her anger boiled, red hot. Even if he had said, “Listen … that night when I kissed you—I don’t quite know what happened there. I hope I didn’t offend you” she would have tried to understand; but to say nothing made him like all the others who believed that, just because she was small, everything connected to her was smaller—smaller joys, smaller pains, smaller dreams—invalidating her, invalidating that kiss.

  He handed her a glass of water. “Why don’t you rinse your mouth.”

  She swished the water around her mouth, wishing she had the courage to spit it right up into his cowardly face.

  “In here.” He held a metal basin below her chin, catching the foamy liquid. With a white cloth, he carefully dried her chin. “Maybe you’d like to rest a minute before I finish your tooth?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” She reclined her head and opened her mouth.

  His face was puzzled but his hands were as capable as before when he scraped the last decay from her molar and packed the hole with something cold and metallic tasting.

  “Let me know if it keeps bothering you.” He walked her to the door, and as she crossed the street he stood outside his office, watching her as though undecided if he should escort her home.

  On the opposite sidewalk, Gerda Heidenreich wavered toward Trudi like a lost star spinning out of control. Her pocket watch without hands dangled on a shoelace around her neck, and the front of her pink dress was darkened by spit that seeped from the corners of her mouth. Her facial muscles were constantly in motion as if reacting to a swiftly changing world that only she co
uld see. When she recognized Trudi, her lips pulled into a vast smile, and she gripped Trudi’s arm, claiming her for the community of freaks.

  Trudi felt Klaus Malter’s eyes and curved her shoulders against his pity. “Go away.” She shook herself free from the young woman. “Sshh—go!”

  The face above her puckered.

  “Stop it, you,” Trudi warned. “Stop it. Now.”

  Silent tears spilled from Gerda’s eyes, steadying her features so that—for an instant—there was the fleeting promise of a loveliness that could have been hers.

  Feeling something hateful and cruel rise within herself, Trudi backed away. “I am not like you,” she hissed, “you hear me?” She left Gerda standing on the sidewalk as she ran toward the pay-library.

  Her father was dozing, his head resting on the counter next to the chessboard, the black bishop in his slack fist. She snatched the golden mirrors from the living-room walls and hauled them up the stairs to her room. Door locked, she stripped off her dress and slip and corset, positioning the mirrors against her pillows so that they reflected most of her body. Pale, solid flesh swelled from her arms and hips as if pushing away from her skeleton. The hooks of her corset had left crimson marks that ran down the front of her torso like a new scar, and the indentations of her garters branded her bulky thighs.

  “Remember this,” she whispered to herself, her jaw aching, “remember this the next time you want Klaus. This is what he would see.”

  Her breasts felt cold, and she covered them with her hands. Against her will, a tingling began in her nipples and, almost instantly, in her groin though she hadn’t touched herself there. The very first time her fingers had evoked that forbidden bliss by coincidence while bathing, she’d felt stunned, overwhelmed by what she thought she surely must have invented. And what she had invented had to be a sin. Anything that felt this fabulous surely had to be a sin.

  But it was not what she wanted now. Not now. And yet, she pushed the merciless faces of the mirrors aside and lay on her bed. “I don’t need Klaus for that.… I don’t need anyone.” Her hands—they knew what to do, and she wished she could keep from crying the drooling woman’s soundless tears while images of Klaus became one with the boys in the barn, invoking the familiar terror that she needed to feed her sin. That part she despised, but she didn’t know how to get to the bliss without it, and so she sucked in that terror with each breath, sucked it in again and again, and fought the boys as they did to her—now, now—what they had not wanted to do to her in the barn, until the fat priest shouted from the pulpit and a large bird fell so high from the sky as if shot from a tower.

  The Nazi time came upon Burgdorf like a Dieb auf Schleichwegen— a thief on sneaky paths—Herr Blau would say after the war. To him and many others in town, the men in the doe-brown shirts were unsympathisch, ridiculous even, but surely not dangerous. Who really paid much attention to the frequent speeches that were delivered—always in loud, slow voices—from podiums draped with Hakenkreuz flags? So what if their flags were in every public building?

  Of course quite a few decent people, including Herr Heidenreich, were happy with Hitler. After all, the Führer was ending unemployment and improving the economy. He was helping the youth to find a new purpose and direction. Herr Heidenreich saw young people joining in group activities instead of slouching about. The positive change was obvious to him, even in the younger children of his customers, a respect for themselves and their town that hadn’t been there before.

  Frau Weiler saw a fresh enthusiasm in her son, Georg, and his friends. How much damage could the Nazis really do? she wondered. Like many others, she stilled her misgivings by saying, “At least let’s wait and see what happens.” Even those parents who felt a sense of danger, like Frau Eberhardt and Herr Stosick, decided to wait.

  When Emil Hesping warned about the Nazis, people thought he was only sore because quite a few of the young men in his gymnasts’ club had joined the SA club instead, wooed by speeches and bigger trophies.

  “Some days,” Trudi’s father told her, “I feel I’m on a train that’s hurtling itself toward an unknown destination.”

  It was a comment both he and Trudi would recall years later when their Jewish friends and customers would be taken away, but the day Leo said it, none of this had begun to happen. The people of Burgdorf were drawn in, gradually, almost imperceptibly. They didn’t know the destination; they only saw the beginning. Their days felt livelier. They had work. Bowls of food on their tables. The Nazis assured them it was far better to live under their regime; they reminded the people of the unemployment they’d suffered until Hitler had promised to give everyone work and they’d started building streets; they told the people that, had it not been for the Jews and their relentless drive for success, their own positions would be far more stable; they promised that German children would have better chances for advancement without the competition of the Jews; they preached a purification of the race, which would leave the German people stronger and more respected. Jews were described as a politiscbes Problem—a political problem.

  Many went along with Hitler’s ideas of reclaiming territories that rightfully belonged to them. Though they would have never voted to kill the Jews, they felt justified in expressing their resentment against Jews, in letting them know their place. They didn’t know that they were giving their power away, didn’t know that—by the time the Nazi regime would become bloated and monstrous with that power—it would be too dangerous for the people to reclaim that power.

  Frau Abramowitz was determined not to let herself be poisoned by the force of hate that stunned many Jews. “It’s important to keep forgiving,” she told her husband, Michel, when they received a typed, unsigned letter.

  “Verdammte Juden”—“Damned Jews”—it started, and accused them of greed, sodomy, bestiality, mercilessness, incest, and adultery. It was filled with absurd references to the Bible. “Jews are children of the devil. Jews are responsible for Communism and conspiracies. Jesus and the prophets were killed by the Jews. Jews are not God’s chosen people—the Christians are. Jews have always plotted against Christianity. Jews are born with the lust to murder in their hearts. Their persecution over the centuries only proves that they are justly being punished for what they did to Jesus. Jews have contaminated Germany.…” The letter ended by urging all Jews to leave the country.

  Frau Abramowitz didn’t want her husband to tell anyone about the letter and was mortified when he refused to let her burn it and decided to take it to the rabbi.

  “The things they say about us.… You’ll only call attention to us.”

  He refolded the page and stuck it into his vest pocket. “We can’t just ignore the danger.”

  “All this will go away. If we just stick it out.”

  It turned out that several Jews in town had received identical letters, written on the same typewriter, giving Frau Abramowitz some consolation of not having been singled out, while it alarmed her husband to the magnitude of that animosity. As she tried to lead her life as normally as possible, forcing pleasure from her garden and books and travel brochures, he increased his secret meetings with people who’d belonged to the Communist party before it had been forbidden.

  When one of his friends, who used to be in the party with him, had his passport confiscated, Michel decided to hide his family’s passports, but they were no longer in back of his sock drawer where he’d kept them with the birth certificates.

  He found his wife in the pay-library across the street, talking with Leo and Trudi Montag. “The passports—” he said. “Did you move them?”

  She turned her face to the side.

  “Where are they?”

  “I knew you’d get angry.”

  “Ilse. When—?”

  “Twelve days ago. The police—”

  “They came to the house?”

  She nodded, her face drawn.

  “Michel—” Leo Montag tried.

  But Herr Abramowitz raised his pipe to si
lence him. “What did they say?” he asked his wife.

  She didn’t look at him. “They didn’t give me a reason.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I was afraid you’d go after them and that they’d keep you.”

  “Our passports.” He slumped against the wooden counter, his lips half open so that Trudi could see the edges of his upper teeth, two rows crowded inside his mouth. “You handed them our passports.”

  “Michel—they took them.”

  Impulsively, Trudi reached for Frau Abramowitz’s hand. Her gentle friend, who had traveled all over the world, now could no longer leave the country.

  “Do you have any idea where this leaves us?” Herr Abramowitz asked.

  “We’ll get them back in time.”

  “In time for what?”

  Ilse Abramowitz’s eyes darted from Trudi to Leo as if apologizing for the argument.

  “Deine Anpassungsfähigkeit—Your ability to adapt,” her husband said, “is far more dangerous to you than any of them will ever be. You’ll keep adapting and adapting until nothing is left.”

  Although Trudi agreed with him, she wished he would stop. Anpassungsfähigkeit She remembered Frau Abramowitz whispering to her, “It’s important never to lose your dignity.” To Frau Abramowitz, it meant a loss of dignity if she rebelled against authority, while to Trudi just rage carried its own dignity. For her it came far more natural to rage against circumstances than to fit herself to them. Sometimes it harmed her, that willfulness, but she wouldn’t have exchanged it for Frau Abramowitz’s acceptance of oppression.

  One Thursday in December, during recess, the fat boy, Rainer Bilder, who’d been tormented and ridiculed by other children for as long as anyone could recall, vanished from school as if to negate his body mass. Though he was only thirteen, no one made much of an effort to look for him, as though he were merely a repulsive growth that had attached itself to the community, whose youths were becoming trimmer and more organized with each day. Some of the boy’s neighbors wondered if he’d been abducted. Most concluded that Rainer was happier wherever he’d chosen to live. Even his parents seemed relieved that he was gone. It made Trudi wonder if people would feel like that about her, too, if she disappeared.