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

  “Even in summer?” Konrad asked, just as Trudi had asked Eva nearly twenty years before.

  “Even in summer.” She remembered how amazed she, too, had felt, and she smiled at the boy. “But Eva figured out that her father’s illness was that terrible fear. She was only a little older than you and, like you, very smart. Eva figured if she could take her father’s fear of cats away, he’d get well again. One night—after her parents were asleep—she sneaked into their bedroom and opened the window.” She described the window for the boy, even the wind that billowed the fine lace curtains and two flies on the windowsill. “And before Eva could step back, a cat she’d never seen before—a sleek, amber cat with white paws—”

  “My cat had white paws.”

  “She must have been a good-looking cat.”

  “She was.” Konrad sounded pleased.

  “Well, you see, that cat with paws like your cat’s—it did exactly what Eva’s father had been afraid of. It settled itself on his throat.…” Trudi raised one hand to the boy’s throat. “And just when Eva was going to yank the cat from her father’s throat, he opened his eyes. Like this.” She widened her eyes. “Eva’s father stared into the cat’s eyes. They were like the lights of a faraway car that’s coming closer—you’ve seen that, haven’t you?”

  Konrad nodded.

  “Eva’s father couldn’t look away. But he kept breathing … breathing.…” Trudi stopped, trying to figure where the story was taking her, letting it unfurl within her till she could see Eva standing by her father’s bed, wearing her thin green dress from first grade. And then she told Konrad what she saw. “Eva stood by her father’s bed for a long time.… Her feet were freezing. But her father didn’t notice her. He didn’t look at anyone except that cat—the cat’s eyes, that is—and neither of them blinked. Not even once. Toward morning the cat arched itself up from the throat of Eva’s father, brushed its whiskers against the underside of his chin, and leapt through the bedroom window without touching the windowsill. It looked as if it were flying, and Eva didn’t hear it touch the ground at all.”

  Konrad let out a deep breath. “I bet my cat could fly like that.”

  Trudi gave him a hug. “She must be a remarkable cat.”

  “When I find her, she can sleep on my throat.”

  “That may not be so good,” Trudi said quickly.

  “Do you think I’ll find her?”

  “Have you ever heard that cats have nine lives?”

  He frowned.

  She took his hands into hers and counted nine of his fingers. “Let’s say your cat had her first life with you and her second life with the little girl from the railroad station.…” She folded two of his fingers toward his palm. “How many lives does she have left to find you?”

  He looked at his fingers. “Seven,” he said. “Did Eva see her cat again?”

  “I don’t believe so. But then it wasn’t her cat to start out with.”

  “My cat was mine. Since she was a kitten. My father brought her home.” He blinked as though he’d startled himself by talking about his father.

  Maybe he can’t let himself think about his father yet, Trudi thought. Maybe all he can let himself think of is that cat. She rubbed his hands between hers. “Eva went back to sleep after the cat was gone,” she told him, “and when she woke up, she heard her father’s voice downstairs. He was up and dressed—she’d never seen him up and dressed—and he lifted her up when she came running down the steps and—”

  Konrad interrupted. “Before, he couldn’t even lift a cup.”

  “That’s right. Before that cat came to lie on his throat, he was very weak. You know what he told Eva when he set her back down on the ground? He told her he’d had a dream that night, a dream of a cat that had made him well.”

  “Did Eva tell him the truth?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he was cured. Better to let him believe what he needed to believe.”

  “What if what you want to believe is a lie?”

  Trudi waited.

  “Like about my cat… Sometimes my mother lies to me.”

  “I can tell that your mother loves you a lot.”

  He nodded as though that had nothing to do with it.

  “Running away and hiding … the way you and your mother have to—it’s awfully hard, Konrad. Some people may do things they normally wouldn’t do.”

  “I don’t think there was a little girl.”

  Trudi stroked his hair.

  “I think my cat still lives in that railroad station.”

  “Well—it wouldn’t be such a bad place. Just think … it would be warm enough and people would feed the cat, even play with her.”

  “I’ll go there. When the war is finished.”

  She felt dizzy with a longing for peace, a longing as powerful as the passion with which she used to will her body to grow, as consuming as the passion that had fueled her revenge on the boys who’d humiliated her. And what she wanted more than anything that moment was for all the differences between people to matter no more—differences in size and race and belief—differences that had become justification for destruction.

  Nights, the woman and the boy slept in the kitchen. Leo Montag had rehearsed their escape with them so many times—a quick rap against the wall—that even the boy would automatically reach for his blankets and run down the stairs. One of the trunks in the cellar was left open for the bedding, and the two would throw everything in there, close the lid, climb into the damp tunnel, and pull the empty potato bin into place. On the Blaus’ side, they’d push the armoire aside, replace it, and hide inside. Herr Blau kept a feather puff and pillows for them in the armoire, and Herr Hesping had drilled air holes into the top, which you could only see if you climbed on a chair.

  To stay inside the tunnel for longer than a few minutes was even harder than they’d thought because water kept seeping through the ground. At first, Herr Blau had tried to line the tunnel with blankets, but they’d soaked through so quickly that they were useless. Finally, Trudi remembered that the Weskopps used to go camping, and she managed to trade two years of free library books for the huge tent, dodging the widow’s question about what she was going to do with it. After Herr Blau cut the green canvas to fit the walls of the tunnel, the moisture still kept coming through, but at least the woman and the boy didn’t get smeared by mud each time they fled to the tunnel.

  So far, none of the visitors to the Montags’ house had been a real danger to the fugitives, and if any of them noticed that Trudi and her father rushed them out of the front door soon after they arrived, they didn’t say so.

  “We’ll stop over soon,” Leo would say, or, “Come by the library tomorrow when it’s open. I’ll have time to talk then.”

  But it hurt Trudi, having to lie to Matthias Berger to keep him from coming back. And her father—he used to look forward to those visits too. Matthias had been playing chess with him about once a week and had ended each of his visits by playing the piano. His lessons with Fräulein Birnsteig had refined his technique without diminishing his intensity. He was accustomed to staying for hours at a time—an impossible risk now with Frau Neimann and Konrad in the house.

  “The piano is broken,” Trudi told him.

  “Let me take a look. Maybe I can fix it.”

  “It needs major work. I—I’ll let you know when it’s ready.”

  “I could still play chess with your father.”

  “He hasn’t been up to chess much lately. Better to wait for the piano.…”

  Matthias left, confused she could tell, as she watched the slope of his shoulders. Even before he’d turned away from her, she’d already missed him. She worried about his headaches; though he never complained about them, she usually could see when he was about to get one because he’d press his palms against his temples as if to keep the pain out, and she’d make him camomile tea or urge him to lie down on the sofa until he felt better.

  She
would have liked to tell the truth to Matthias and Eva and the Abramowitzs, who’d been forced to vacate their house and now lived in one furnished room on Lindenstrasse, but Emil Hesping had impressed on her that each additional person who knew about the fugitives increased the risk of capture. “For all of us,” he’d said.

  He was against including Frau Weiler in any way, but since it was impossible to feed four on food rations that were barely enough for two, Leo managed to enlist Frau Weiler’s support by asking her if she could spare some groceries for two people he knew were in need. “That’s all I can tell you, Hedwig,” he said when she wanted to know more.

  “It’s easy enough,” she said, “with a grocery store. Setting aside a bit. Even the government can’t always keep track, right? Things spoil, after all.…”

  Though Ilse Abramowitz no longer received letters from Frau Simon, she kept mailing packages, depleting her own scant resources as if sending the supplies would keep her Jewish friends from vanishing.

  “They’ll be back,” she insisted, refusing to listen to her husband’s speculation that they might have already been killed in camps.

  It was a Wednesday evening in May, and they were alone in their tiny room. He sat on the bed, which they’d covered with an embroidered tablecloth to make it look more like a sofa. The linen cloth was one of the few things they’d managed to bring from their house. He was reading the photography book that someone—no doubt, the unknown benefactor—had left outside his door early that morning. Despite his gratitude, he felt betrayed because what he really needed—protection for himself and his wife—not even the unknown benefactor could give him.

  Ilse was darning socks at the scarred table, a silver thimble on her right forefinger. “They’re for work, those camps,” she said.

  “That’s what they tell us.”

  “You can’t prove any of this,” she cried.

  He nodded, gravely, and told her she was right. “I can’t prove any of this, Ilse.” His hands itched. They’d been puffy and red for nearly three months, ever since he’d started forced labor in the soap factory. It took half an hour by streetcar and another half hour to walk there. Quite a few Russian prisoners worked alongside the Jews, and they weren’t allowed to talk to each other.

  “I’d rather be subjected to injustice,” his wife said, “than to be the one who inflicts it on others.”

  “It doesn’t have to be one or the other.”

  “But given a choice, Michel. If you had a choice … The price they pay is so much higher.”

  “Nonsense,” he said. “If you—”

  “They might survive, but they’ll never recover.”

  He raised his hand to ward off the compassion in her voice—compassion not for their own people, but for the persecutors.

  “And maybe the worst thing is that they won’t know.…” Her voice grew soft. “… that they mistake what they are for being human.”

  “Don’t ask me to feel sorry for them.”

  She pulled the wicker sewing basket closer and busied herself with the mending of his black socks, weaving the thread through the thinning material again and again and again—anything, her husband thought, to keep from thinking about what was happening to their people. As she finished mending the hole, she methodically pulled the thread through, twice, to make a knot, and then bit it off with her even teeth, although the scissors lay next to her. He used to remind her that she’d ruin her teeth doing that. But what difference did it make now?

  As she rolled the sock with its matching partner into a tight, neat ball and picked up another sock, Michel Abramowitz turned the page in his book, though he couldn’t remember a single word he’d read. There was so much he couldn’t say to Ilse. He couldn’t tell her about the rumors he’d heard of prisoners who’d had to undress in groups before they’d been shot in the neck. It was something he kept thinking about—especially at night when he lay awake. How could any country be this cruel, humiliating people before killing them with such gruesome efficiency? And what he kept coming back to was the question of the clothes. What had happened to the clothes after the people had been shot? It seemed like a petty question, considering the scope of devastation, and yet it was the one that tortured him. He’d find himself obsessed with visions of those clothes, being handed to new prisoners, who would wear them for a while until they, too, would be forced to strip for their deaths. And so on, and so on—until the one constant element was those clothes.

  His wife had finished darning the next sock and was biting off the thread.

  It’s amazing, Michel thought, what people can get used to and still call life: we have lost most of our belongings; we have been crowded into small rooms; we’re not allowed to leave our hometown; we can’t use public transportation unless we work more than seven kilometers from home; we’re no longer permitted to possess cameras or binoculars or opera glasses or electrical appliances; we’ve had to turn over our radios and jewelry; we’re not allowed outside our rooms between eight at night and six in the morning; we’ve been kicked, beaten, and humiliated; we’ve had our families ripped from us … and yet, and yet, we go on living.

  He thought of all the times he’d raged against his wife for accepting each new attack with dignity. “Deine Anpassungsfähigkeit—your ability to adapt—is far more dangerous to you than any of them will ever be.…” But how much better was he? He’d come to accept all that too—only out of fear.

  “Don’t work so hard, Ilse,” he said gently.

  Looking up, she smiled at him and threaded her needle.

  It occurred to him how—all at once it seemed—she’d aged rapidly, the fine wrinkles in her face deepening, that stiffness in her shoulders and hands. Although still lovely, she had lost the essence, the spirit.… Still, she held on to that dignity of hers, keeping up her appearance and her hope even though—as of tomorrow—she too would have to work in the soap factory. At sixty, she was far too old for heavy work like that. But the new laws said that Jewish men up to seventy-five and Jewish women up to seventy had to do forced labor. That meant another thirteen years for him. Michel couldn’t allow himself to think like that. Hitler’s madness had to stop. Had to be stopped. Every night he prayed for Hitler’s assassination.

  At least his son had gotten out in time. And he and Ilse had come so close. At the Argentinean consulate in Düsseldorf, they’d received confirmation that they would get visas. But first, they’d been told, they had to get certificates of health and the necessary vaccinations. Four times they’d gone through the process, and each time a letter had arrived that their visas could not be issued since new directions from Argentina had arrived. Four times their son had sent the money for their journey, and four times they’d paid for that journey which, now, he doubted they would ever make.

  And then there was his daughter, who had decided to divorce her husband because, she said, it would harm his practice if he stayed married to a Jewish woman. Noble, Michel Abramowitz thought; even here Ruth protects him. But he knew Fritz well enough to figure that he’d requested the divorce to cleanse himself from any Jewish connection. Ruth had found work in a small clinic in Dresden, and she’d written her parents not to worry about her, that her room had a sink and a view of the Zwinger.

  A view of the Zwinger, Michel Abramowitz thought. As if that solved everything.

  His wife rolled up the last socks. Gathering scissors and needles into the basket, she placed the tight balls of socks in the curve of her elbow and carried them to the dresser. “Ready to go to sleep?”

  Michel closed his book. Together, they lifted the tablecloth from the bed, shook out its creases, and stepped toward each other to fold its length like so many decades of desire until the gap between them had waned to the thickness of the folded square of embroidered linen.

  fifteen

  1942

  ALEXANDER STURM INSISTED ON BEING PRESENT WHEN HIS WIFE WAS questioned about her parents. Stunned that his request had been granted, he sat next to her; yet, his
one act of assertion had drained him so of his fighting spirit, that he could only listen silently as she denied any knowledge of her parents’ plans to escape. He admired how calmly she lied, how regally she held up her head. She hadn’t looked that composed the night her parents had left in a car they’d bought on the black market. They’d been urging Eva to come with them, south, and across the border into Switzerland, where Eva’s brothers had settled after completing their studies.

  “You know I’d go if Alexander came along.…” She was crying, her eyes blurred behind her boyish glasses.

  Alexander told her again it was a lot less safe—to drive through Germany like that—than to wait out the war in Burgdorf. “It can’t last much longer,” he said, and he listed all the laws her parents were breaking. “Simply being out at night, not wearing the yellow star, owning valuables…” He felt furious with Eva’s father, who was practically helpless, a burden, yet was prepared to risk his wife’s and daughter’s lives with his impossible scheme for escape. “You can be stopped. Arrested. Shot.”

  And now Eva had to deal with the aftermath.

  He was convinced the officer didn’t believe her when she said she’d last seen her parents five days before. No, she had not noticed anything unusual. Her father had been resting in the living room—“he’s an invalid, as you certainly must know”—while she and her mother had made potato pancakes in the kitchen. No, her husband had worked late that evening. No, her parents did not own a car. No …

  Several times during the interrogation Alexander sensed Eva glancing at him as if for confirmation, but he felt paralyzed with fear. He’d always been able to count on himself to do the proper thing, to schedule and manage his life as well as his work, to follow the law. He couldn’t believe his stupidity at having demanded to be here with Eva. If both of them were to be arrested, he wouldn’t be able to do anything for her. Or myself, he thought, his palms wet.