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

  For Helene, living in America was a constant shifting between discovery and loss. She liked how the houses were separated by gardens, not constructed side against side as in Germany. Liked the vastness of her new country, the dense forests, the mountaintops that held snow till late in the spring. But she didn’t like the taste of lamb—a bit wild, she thought. American shoes were flimsy, she decided, and though the town’s major industry was a shoe factory that shipped merchandise throughout the country, she ordered the shoes for her family from Germany, along with rosehip tea and delicacies like marzipan or the strawberry syrup she liked to pour over her puddings. Since American bread was fluffy and left your belly empty half an hour after eating, she baked her own solid-crust Graubrot. Through furniture, tablecloths, and paintings, she created Germany for herself in her husband’s house.

  She tried to substitute what she missed: walking along the lake and watching the reflections of the house and trees and islands would remind her of the Rhein and the meadows along its banks and made her miss the Rhein somewhat less. She’d swim in the lake. Read by its shore. Row the children out in the wooden boat. Upon waking, she’d always look out over the lake first and orient herself to the weather by its ever-changing colors that depended so much on the sky. Some mornings, both sky and lake would be gray until a few slices of light would fall from behind the mountains across the bay. That light—broken by the shadows of clouds— would lie on the surface of the lake, pointing directly at her window, and if she’d move from one side to the other, the light would follow her like the eyes of saints in some paintings.

  She was always comparing things, weighing for herself if she liked them better here or in Germany, marveling at luxuries she hadn’t experienced before, while missing the familiar. She might turn a corner of a street in Winnipesaukee, say, and find herself in front of a tree or a doorway that evoked Burgdorf for her. Just as she might watch her husband as he dressed by the mirror—those fierce green eyes in his agile face; the planes of his short, compact body; the V shape of his dense chest hair where it thickened downward—and recall the longing she used to feel for him in Germany.

  And because she missed the written words that had formed the intimate connection between her and Stefan for seventeen years—so much more satisfying to be with him on the page than in person—she began to write to him again, fervent notes in German that she would hide and never show him, letters in which she didn’t have to hold back with her love for him or with her anger, letters that—after her death—her granddaughter Emma would find in a red cake tin behind Helene’s shoes in the armoire. Assuming her grandfather had received every one of these letters, Emma would construct a history of passion and understanding between her grandparents, and resolve that this was the kind of love she wanted for herself.

  But her letters to Germany, Helene sent off, and Stefan enjoyed it when she read to him Leo’s responses. It disappointed her that Margret only sent brief notes. But she’d known all along that Margret didn’t much like to write. Increasingly, she missed Margret, wished she could see her laugh when she told her that in America a woman old enough to have grandchildren was still called a girl. When she’d written her about that, Margret hadn’t even mentioned it in her short answer. Often Helene had dreams about her hometown right after getting mail, dreams that took her to the Rhein and Schreberstraße where she’d lived, dreams about Stefan’s parents or about some of the nuns from the Theresienheim, and when she’d wake up, she’d feel it even stronger than usual, that seesaw existence of not belonging to either country, of living two fragmentary lives—that of Helene Blau married to Stefan in America and that of Helene Montag still waiting for Stefan in Germany.

  Nothing has changed.

  Everything has changed.

  It did not take her long to become impatient with herself: she did not want to wrap her life around Stefan or his absences. Back at home she’d had her achievements as a teacher to balance that yearning for him; she’d had Leo and Margret and her neighbors and colleagues and friends; but here she only had his children who reminded her of him, and a language that got in the way of connecting to others. All her life she had thought of herself as intelligent, something that had been confirmed again and again by her parents, her teachers, and later her students; but in this new country she couldn’t even work as a teacher—at least not until the language would become as familiar as the one she’d grown up with. In this country she only had things because her husband provided them for her. But she refused to settle for that. It was enough to feel lacking as a mother and wife. About the language she could do something. Although Stefan spoke English with ease, she didn’t want him to become the voice to link her to his world. Determined to make this new language her own, she borrowed books from the library and struggled through them, even though she only absorbed every fourth or fifth word. But she finished them. For herself. And went back for others.

  Sometimes, in public, she’d feel embarrassed by her accent and impatient with herself for not adapting faster, but Stefan would assure her that it would all come together in time. “It’s gradual,” he told her, “at least for me it was. It got easier once I started thinking in English. At first just a few sentences, maybe ten percent, then more, until it got to be forty percent, fifty, and then one day I realized I’d been thinking entirely in English for some time. Except for counting. I still do that in German. Sometimes I dream in German.”

  He gave her suggestions on how to speak better, reminded her when she forgot to push her tongue forward in the th sound and said ze instead of the. The r that he’d worked on so hard sounded like an l with her. And if she had a word that had both a th and an r, she sounded as though she’d just stepped off the boat. Like wanting to say three and having it come out as zlee.

  Gradually, she recognized more words. During the day she spoke German to the children: it was easier than taking every thought, translating it into English inside her head, and then saying it aloud, a process that always meant one extra step between herself and the meaning. Greta already knew some German from the months she’d spent alone with her father, but Tobias resisted it. It occurred to Helene that the children’s response to German was like their reaction to the milk she heated for them before bedtime—Greta drank it willingly, while Tobias loathed the skin that formed on top of it and pulled into wrinkles as the milk cooled.

  It pleased Stefan to hear Greta and Helene speak in the language of his childhood. Though he’d lived most of his life in America, he was drawn to the German side in Helene—her oldest identity—and he felt ready to reclaim some of the traditions, the customs, for himself as much as for his children. He told them about his hometown. Showed them the painted tiles for the stove he’d brought from there. Let them watch when, with the help of Homer Wilson, he cut an opening into the wall between the dining room and kitchen and installed the stove. Coal was sent up in the dumbwaiter and shoveled through the stove’s iron door from the kitchen.

  The wide bench that hugged the contours of the stove where it protruded into the dining room became one of Helene’s favorite places. Facing the mountains across the lake, she’d sit there with a book, her back against the tiles that radiated a gentle heat.

  She and Stefan agreed to celebrate Easter and Christmas the way they had in Burgdorf, and to adopt American holidays like the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving, which Stefan called the holiday of all immigrants. They talked about having a Christmas party for the tenants in the lobby and perhaps another party each summer. When Helene suggested a summer solstice party, Stefan liked that idea.

  Her first Thanksgiving, Helene tasted squash and yams, and she liked both so much that she decided to prepare them from then on. That December, she bought a life-size nativity set: Mary with the infant in her arms, Joseph with his walking stick, an ox, and a donkey. They were white and glossy and unexpectedly light; and they barely stood out against the snow when Helene and Homer Wilson arranged them around the fountain in the courtyard.

 
“Will I ever get used to this cold weather?” she asked him.

  “No.” He wiped the snow from his face. “At least I haven’t.”

  Two days before Christmas the nativity set was stolen, but the thieves abandoned the Madonna in the bushes a block away as if they’d found it too cumbersome to travel with an infant molded to his mother’s chest. When Homer Wilson who referred to the Madonna as a BVM—Blessed Virgin Mary—cleaned off the mud, Greta noticed that one of the Madonna’s cheeks was dented and that the infant’s nose was chipped. Mrs. Wilson cried when she and Greta followed her husband who carried the BVM into the furnace room and stored her behind the colossal boiler that was wedged between two columns.

  Afterwards Mrs. Wilson took Greta into her bedroom, where she knelt with her in front of her dresser and prayed for the evil souls of the thieves. “Redemption,” she told Greta, “waits for even the most blasphemous sinners, even for sinners that the pope doubts can be saved, and that’s why I always trust nuns more than priests when it comes to forgiveness because it’s in the nature of women to redeem, you’ll find that out once you are older and a woman yourself, because think, why else would God give the Angel of Mercy such an important place in heaven, so even he can learn from her about redemption and …”

  Greta stretched her neck to see the top of Mrs. Wilson’s dresser, where a three-dimensional Last Supper glittered in pretty shades of green and purple. On its left stood the white plaster angel with lipstick smudges all over. On its right a framed photograph of the Wilson baby who had died because she was so special that God wanted her back by his side. That’s what Mrs. Wilson said. Fastened all around the frame with faded ribbons were baby toys—rattles and teething rings.

  “I know about sin and about redemption because I have felt the wings of the Angel of Mercy in my blood.” Mrs. Wilson crossed herself. “Many nights.” She reached for the angel and kissed the side of her gown, adding to the residue of red. Then she kissed Greta’s cheek. For some time now she’d been sure there was something holy in Greta, and she liked to ask her advice even if the child was daydreaming and didn’t answer. “About Danny,” Mrs. Wilson said, “when do you think he is going to move in with us?”

  Greta hoped Danny’s mother would stay alive for a long time. A pink-faced woman with large pores, she coughed when she came to fetch Danny after his weekend visits. Her lungs had holes in them. Danny said so. Being scared and waiting that long for someone to die could make you mean. Danny was mean. He’d pinched her when she’d spilled lemonade on his new shoes. Maybe if her own mother had taken that long to die, Greta would be mean too. But Danny hadn’t liked it when she’d told him that.

  Mrs. Wilson set her Angel of Mercy back on the dresser. “It’ll be soon now,” she said. “We both know that Danny will live here real soon, right?” Taking Greta’s right hand, she guided it toward Greta’s face, mumbling, “forehead, chest, left shoulder, right shoulder,” as she dabbed against each in the sign of the cross. “Now you say Amen.”

  “Amen.”

  “Good. Amen.” Mrs. Wilson stood up and showed Greta the fishing pole she would give Danny for Christmas. “Mr. Wilson promised me he’ll build a bobhouse with Danny out on the bay once it’s frozen thick and they can sit in there and fish through a hole in the ice, and just think Greta, once Danny’s living with us every single day, he’ll have a real family like you have a real family now, not just with a father but with a mother too, so lucky, she is, your stepmother, let me tell you, she knows what it means to get a child from another woman when you don’t have one yourself….”

  Helene found that German food did much more than feed her and her family: it connected her to Burgdorf and to her memories so that, when she shredded potatoes for Reibekuchen, she could see Frau Blau making them, see herself and Margret eating them, brown-crisp, as quickly as they came from the pan; Erbsensuppe—pea soup—meant first snow, which was when her mother used to start simmering her soups; Erdbeertorte—strawberry tart—conjured that picnic by the Rhein when she’d swum for the first time across the wide river with Leo and Emil Hesping. Food kept her linked to certain incidents. To seasons and traditions. While measuring ingredients for Stollen, it made her feel less isolated to think of women all over Burgdorf doing the same as they got ready for Christmas. Margret’s Stollen would have more raisins than Ingeborg Weinhart’s, and Frau Buttgereit’s would be sweeter than anyone else’s because she measured her ingredients by touch and always used too much sugar. What Helene liked about her own Stollen was the grated lemon peel she mixed into her icing. Food, of course, was also a way to show her competence, her love. While Tobias was a fussy eater, Greta would snitch cookie batter by the fistful if Helene didn’t set it high on a shelf. Twice now Greta burned her tongue by tasting vanilla pudding before it had cooled.

  For meals in America, Helene learned, you served more meat than in Germany. Fewer potatoes. And the main meal was in the evening, not the middle of the day. But there she kept the German pattern because of Stefan’s schedule. After serving lunch at his restaurant, he’d come home to eat with his family. By four he’d be gone again, which made for solitary evenings after the children were asleep. She looked forward to Christmas Eve when his restaurant would be closed and he’d be home all day. He was planning to bake pheasants for her and the children. Though she enjoyed his elaborate meals on special occasions, she’d get annoyed if he went on about his recipes as if they were poems, while barely acknowledging the food she prepared for him.

  When he carried the tray with two pheasants into the apartment and saw the tall Christmas pine decorated with dozens of burning wax candles, he suddenly smelled the scorched flesh of the Hungarian.

  Dropping the covered platter on the piano bench, he rushed at the candles with his breath, his hands. “Are you trying to destroy my house and every person in it?” he shouted at Helene.

  Tobias started to cry.

  Greta pressed herself against Helene’s skirt.

  “Do you understand the danger?”

  Helene stroked Greta’s hair and bent to pick up Tobias. “We always have candles on the tree in Germany.” She kept her voice steady for the children, though her body was shaking.

  “Always doesn’t count in America.”

  “There must be others in America who light Christmas candles.”

  “Yes, but they’re not living in my house.”

  “Your parents have candles on their tree.”

  “We are not in my parents’ house.” He was circling the pine, kicking aside wrapped presents as he splattered wax and singed his fingertips. Helene’s wax Madonna toppled from the crown of the tree and landed sideways on the floor, splitting her starched brocade gown.

  “I don’t know of a single house that has ever burned because of candles.”

  “And that’s why you’re trying to burn—”

  “You’re not being reasonable.”

  “You are the one who is not being reasonable.”

  “Stefan—”

  “You know what it’s like when a house burns? When people burn to death?”

  “It was there in every one of your letters for over a year.”

  “It’s still there.”

  “Candles on a tree are different from a restaurant fire.”

  “All fires start with one little flame.”

  “Ja, and not all flames turn into huge fires.”

  “But they can. One flame it takes. One flame is all. I forbid you to use candles on the tree again.”

  “Forbid?” She felt his fear as though it had a body of its own and was about to attack her. “Forbid?” She raised her chin toward the heavy, blue drapes and lace curtain that Mrs. Teichman had sewn to cover the bare windows his first wife had loved. He’d wanted to keep the windows exposed and have all that light move through the rooms, but she’d told him she couldn’t bear to watch birds fly into the glass and die. And she’d made other changes. Without Stefan’s permission. Had sent for Mr. Wilson to take the first wife�
�s delicate, tufted sofa and wicker baskets to the storage area and had set up her mother-in-law’s lion chairs, had bought a sturdy leather sofa to match Stefan’s chair. “Forbid?” she asked once more as she led his children from the living room, leaving him there with the rest of the lit candles.

  It was the only time Stefan would ever speak to her like that. In bed that night he said he was sorry, and as he talked to her about the Hungarian and the others who had died in the fire, she held him and reassured him she understood. Yet, she was still angry with him. What confused her was how grateful she felt to have him in her arms like this. She didn’t want to be grateful to any husband for allowing her to touch him. It only made her angrier.

  And that was good because anger was so much clearer. Anger kept her separate from him, gave her the sudden boldness to take him—roughly almost—using his shock to straddle him, cage him between her thighs, her arms.

  “What is this?” he said and then laughed, flustered, and said her name as if to remind her who she was—“Lenchen,” he said, “Helene”—but already he was raising his face toward hers as she weighed him down with her breasts and her belly, crushed herself against him till his body thrashed to meet hers, escape into her though he twisted away before she could fill herself with him.

  She didn’t trust herself to look at him the next morning while they got ready for the tenants’ Christmas party in the lobby. And it wasn’t just her face that was hot, but her entire body. The worst ever: endless waves of red waiting beneath her skin to betray her, to spill up across her chest, her arms, her neck. She busied herself with the children, making sure to have at least one of them with her at all times so that she and Stefan could not possibly talk. Relieved when he left to roast two dozen chickens in his restaurant oven, she fussed with her platters of German potato salad and cold cuts, garnishing them with radish crowns and slices of boiled eggs the way Frau Blau had taught her and Margret. She didn’t see Stefan again until it was time to set everything up in the lobby, and then she kept her eyes on the white paper cuffs that he’d slipped around the ends of the crisp drumsticks.