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

  Though the Blau children wouldn’t be able to explain this to themselves, they’d always feel a searing, wordless link to their mother, a longing that had not been satisfied entirely, though—for a brief time—they both had known the promise of it. And while Caleb would find that link within himself and, eventually, translate it into films that would make audiences feel they were watching something too intimate to witness, Emma would seek that connection in others, chasing a bliss so inflated by memory that she would only be able to match it with her Opa—grandfather—who would be alive till she was six, long enough to infuse her with his passion for the Wasserburg.

  That day of Emma’s birth, when Stefan had first held her, he’d felt startled because he’d recognized the whirling child from his longago vision. Decades ago, after his own children had been born, he’d stopped searching for that child, but now that she was here, he felt entitled to her because she was his family—more so than anyone before her—giving him an even stronger foothold in America than he’d thought possible. Drawn to Emma’s need—the very same need that now repelled Yvonne—he marveled at the grasp of those tiny hands, the force of her wail, and he predicted it would be impossible to wrestle anything from her if she refused to let go, a prediction that Caleb would remember years later.

  Stefan’s bond to Emma was instant and far stronger than his bond to Helene, to his children, or even to his dead wives. And he was sure Emma understood that, because as soon as she learned to walk, she’d head for him first. He lulled her into the German language, although Robert reminded him that it wasn’t wise to speak German in public, and Emma grew to cherish the language so much that, often, she refused to answer her parents when they spoke English with her.

  “Hoppe, hoppe Reiter, wenn er fällt dann schreit er …” was her favorite game. Her Opa would bounce her on his knees—“… fällt er in den Graben, fressen ihn die Raben…”—and she would ride across ditches, past ravens to the final tumble into the swamp, “Plumps,” squealing with delight as Opa’s knees opened and she fell, fell into bottomless adventure and exhilaration while his hands pulled her up again to another “Plumps,” her breath snagging with a sound that was as close to laughing as it was to crying when she plummeted again and again, confident her hands were anchored in Opa’s. They had other games, of course, but none left Emma as breathless. “More,” she would cry each time he’d pull her up, “more.”

  Whenever they had dinner at Opa’s apartment, Emma would claim the chair next to him and sit on top of the old encyclopedias from Germany that used to boost her Vati on the piano bench when he was a boy. Opa had told her that sitting on those leatherbound books would put the German words right into her blood. While Robert enjoyed it when Emma called him Vati, he spoke English with both children. Though Yvonne agreed with him that it was better for the children to not be identified as German, she rather liked it that they were growing up bilingual because she had always wanted to speak more than one language and had admired that ability in Robert, although, considering the times, she would have preferred French or Italian.

  It not only astonished everyone in the family but also the tenants how much Stefan Blau, who’d never been one to fuss over children, adored his granddaughter. While Helene was glad that he was capable of such joy in a child, she felt disappointed that his own children had missed out on that. And Yvonne, though relieved whenever Stefan took Emma along, felt jealous because it seemed too easy for Emma to leave her behind. To be the object of Emma’s unrestrained devotion—she missed it as much as she had dreaded it.

  And now Emma’s affection had shifted to her grandfather. Yvonne was reminded of it in a hundred ways. Like one summer afternoon, when the entire family was walking on the path by the lake, and she stretched out her hand for Emma. Who reached for Stefan’s hand instead. It was over in a second. And of no significance, Yvonne told herself. No significance, really.

  But why then did she feel cut to the bone?

  Why then did she hate Stefan as he crouched, circled his arms around Emma’s shoulders, and told her, “I want you to hold your Mutti’s hand”?

  Why then did she have tears in her eyes as she walked away from her daughter and said, “You don’t have to”?

  Emma learned to dodge the warm milk that her Oma—grandmother—insisted was good for children, but Caleb said the skin was the best part. It made Emma shudder when he slurped it up, flecks of white on his lips.

  “Your Uncle Tobias was like you about milk,” Oma would say to her and shake her head as if everything bad that had ever happened to Uncle Tobias was a result of his refusal to drink warm milk, like always looking so angry, or like living by himself and being lonely.

  But Emma didn’t think Uncle Tobias was lonely, because she’d seen him dance with Danny Wilson in Danny Wilson’s living room one morning. She’d been playing hide-and-seek with Caleb and had crawled behind the shrubs along the back of the house where the windows were wide but not high, so that when you were outside, you saw the ceiling but not the people inside. Not until you looked down, the way you would into a fish tank. And that morning the people down there had been Uncle Tobias and Danny Wilson, dancing on the couch, and as Emma had watched them from above, she’d noticed how smooth Danny Wilson’s back was while her uncle’s was covered with black hair so thick it looked like fur.

  Another reason Uncle Tobias was never lonely was that he had every book in the world. When her father had taken her for a visit to Uncle Tobias’ bookstore in Hartford, he’d let her climb up one of his long ladders that rolled along the shelves and had read her a story from a red leather book.

  Those times Tobias slept with other men were not because he was drawn to them, but because of Danny—trying to crowd Danny less with his love; wanting to get even with Danny for not loving him as much as he did. But what Tobias was always left with afterwards was disgust with himself and the unease at having used himself as well as someone else, even if that someone else had gotten what he’d wanted. Still, sex without love felt all wrong—not in the sense the church considered it to be wrong, but in a deeper and more personal way.

  In a few years he would be forty, and he no longer wanted to be alone; but whenever he talked to Danny about living together, Danny would get skittish. Distant. That’s why their days together were better if Tobias didn’t mention it. Though Danny would always start out glad to see him, Tobias would soon feel burdened by maintaining that balance of lightness with his silence. Yet, whenever he managed to keep quiet about moving in together, he’d drive back to Hartford anxious about Danny with other men, especially Stewart Robichaud who worked right next door at the restaurant and had been Danny’s first lover.

  If only he could see Danny struggle with being faithful. But Danny refused to understand any reasons for being faithful, and Tobias was afraid that if he ever made Danny choose between only him and those others, he’d be sent off by Danny with a generous hug and minor regrets.

  One weekend in January, when Danny visited him in Hartford, Tobias got impatient with himself for being cautious and offered, “I’d even move back to Winnipesaukee if you wanted to get a place together.”

  “You’d get cranky being around your family that much. Besides, you have your work here.”

  “I bet you could find a really good job here.”

  “That would be convenient, wouldn’t it? For you.”

  “That’s not how I meant it.”

  “I already got a job.”

  “What I meant was that there are a lot of apartment buildings in the city, and with your experience—”

  “My experience is doing just fine where it is.”

  “But you’ve worked in the same place since you were a boy, practically. Do you want to retire there?”

  Danny didn’t answer. Wouldn’t answer when Tobias kept at him with questions. And started to pack, though he’d planned to spend the night. While Tobias stayed behind with the heaviness of wanting more, feeling lost in the house he’d furnished over
the years with Danny in mind, choosing the upholstery for his sofa and chairs because Danny liked that deep shade of green, the white lamps because they were similar to the ones Danny had.

  At the train station he caught up with Danny. “Why don’t we just go back to my place?”

  Danny rubbed his forehead. “I got some stuff to take care of.”

  “Like what?”

  Danny shrugged.

  “Can’t it wait?”

  “Not really.”

  “But you were going to stay,” Tobias said, hating the whining in his voice.

  Danny turned his head toward the direction from where his train was to come.

  Resolutely, Tobias added, “Then I’ll come along.”

  “Now?”

  “Because this is important to me.”

  “Well… this weekend won’t be that good for me. Why don’t you visit some other time soon?”

  Visit. When Tobias stepped from the railroad station, frozen leaves clogged the gutters. He kicked them, broke them into clumps. Took sharp breaths to rid himself of the sadness in his throat. Visit. He drew up his shoulders. Zipped his leather jacket to his chin. Promised himself to ignore Danny for a while. To stay away from him. Maybe for good. But then Danny called, of course, as he usually did after an argument, and when Tobias took the train to New Hampshire a few weeks later, Danny was excited to see him and gave him expensive ice skates he’d bought for him from last summer’s dog track money.

  That evening, as they skated away from the Wasserburg in their long woolen coats, the moon was pale. Snow capped the mountains across the lake, and beyond those mountains, clouds that were lighter than the sky feathered upward, nearly transparent, as weightless as Tobias felt next to Danny while they raced across the ice.

  “Higher,” Emma shouted and felt Opa’s palms against her back as he pushed the swing. Stretching her sturdy legs, she flew. “Higher.”

  He laughed. “You’re a bossy little girl. I like that.”

  Flying, still flying, she dropped her head back until she saw Opa standing upside down, wind blowing his gray suit jacket to one side. “Higher!”

  Red and yellow leaves tumbled across the ground and from branches that were almost bare. In one pile of leaves, a squirrel was playing, its movements as noisy as those of a much larger animal, a dog, say, or even a bear. Otherwise, the garden above the garage was empty since Caleb and the other children in the building were at school. Because she was the youngest, Emma had Opa all to herself. She liked it best when they were the only ones here, when she could soar above the sandbox and the stone bench like the seagulls that rode the wind above the lake, their wings graceful, their cries shrill.

  “Aren’t you hungry?” Opa shouted as she came flying back toward him. “What do you want Opa to cook for you?”

  “A hot dog. With mustard.”

  “So American.”

  “And chocolate mousse.”

  “At least you have good taste when it comes to dessert.” He walked to the front of the swing, and as he caught the ropes to slow her down, he saw Tobias on this same swing. Did I ever catch the ropes for him? Hold him steady? Let him soar? His sadness at his distance from Tobias had grown sharper ever since Emma had positioned herself in his life. Tobias’ visits were rare, and though Stefan wished he’d see him more often, he found it hard to be near his son. Because of the anger in his shoulders. An anger that had been there forever, it seemed. Tobias moved like a man who felt wronged in the world and had learned to be cautious because others were sure to misunderstand him. When he walked, he had to turn his entire body to keep the anger contained in his shoulders because, if he didn’t, it would surely swell and spill into his arms, his fists.

  “Can I have two hot dogs?” Emma asked.

  “With mustard, I know. Hold still,” Stefan told her. “You’re all tangled.”

  On the way to his restaurant, yellow leaves drifted toward them, and she caught two, dry and light; but when she rubbed them between her fingers, they got sticky and came apart, making her hand smell green. Like cut grass, only stronger. On the path ahead lay a white stone. Leaves rustled beneath her feet as she ran to pick it up. Smooth, it was smooth, the stone, and it fit into her palm.

  Opa bent across it, ran one thumb along its surface. “See? It has a line of gold right down the center.”

  “Real gold?”

  “It’s a treasure.”

  “You can keep it.”

  “Thank you, Emma.” He looked so pleased when he dropped it into his pocket, and she knew that, once they got to his restaurant, he’d lay it into the basket on the shelf with the St. Joseph where he kept all the treats—stones and feathers and shells—that she found for him. Whenever she wanted, he let her play with the Joseph statue, but he always put it back on the shelf because it had given him the land for the Wasserburg and his restaurant.

  Slipping her fingers into Opa’s, she noticed how much prettier the stone was than she’d first thought. It often was like that—seeing something with him made it better. Especially when they went through the house together, checking on repairs that needed to be made, visiting tenants who were always glad to see her, climbing the ladder to the platform above the elevator while the breath-song of the house billowed around her, opening Opa’s wooden toolbox to see if he’d left one of his treats for her inside—licorice or crayons or a compass on a key ring.

  She liked it when he let her help him with his lists. “Will you remind me to get prices for carpeting?” he’d ask. “Will you remind me to have the laundry room painted?” She prided herself on keeping his lists in her mind, ready to recite them for him. “I wouldn’t remember half of this without you,” he’d say.

  He’d laugh when she did somersaults on the peacock carpets in the hallways; sniffed the old linen blueprints; traced the golden flowers and birds on the flocked wallpaper in the lobby; tap-tapped her fingers against the shrouded Mary-and-Jesus statue in the furnace room.

  Sometimes she’d get Opa to play the hiding game with her. She’d slip away from him and hide inside one of the tenants’ delivery cubicles, trying not to giggle while she’d listen to him search for her. “Now where did Emma go? I just saw her a minute ago….” And when he’d pull her out, he’d look amazed that he’d found her. “Now tell me what you sat on,” he’d say. “A pound of butter? A head of lettuce?”

  Her Opa loved the Wasserburg. And Emma knew she was the only person he loved as much as his building. Because he had seen both her and the Wasserburg the very same day—long before she was born. First he had built the Wasserburg. Then he had waited for her to get born. “Getting what you want,” he had taught her, “has to do with holding it in your mind so strongly that you keep returning to it—without thinking—so that you are always linked to it. That’s how I built this house. That’s how I came to America.”

  And that’s how I came to be here.

  That’s how.

  “Blau-blau-blau-blau…” Frankie Morrell was making fish faces at Caleb, lips puffing outward each time he said “Blau.”

  One of the other boys started doing it too. “Blau-blau—”

  “Stop it.” Caleb grabbed his jacket from the rack in back of their classroom.

  “What kind of name is Blau anyhow?”

  “Blau-blau-blau—”

  “It means—”

  “Quiet, you boys,” their first grade teacher, Miss Heflin, called out to them. “Get your coats on. Hurry up or you’ll miss recess.” Her voice sounded friendly and impatient at the same time, the can-I-help-you-voice she used when she helped her parents in their grocery store after school and found the children gawking at the display of candies. “Hats and mittens,” she called after them as they ran out into the snow.

  “Blau-blau—”

  “It means blue.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “Does so. In German.”

  “That’s Nazi.”

  Judy Magill laughed.

  Nazi? Caleb didn�
�t know what it meant, only felt its ugliness when several of the children jumped around him, chanting, “Hazi tazi we got a Nazi. …” When he ran from them, they chased after him, around the granite building and to the edge of the schoolyard, feet crushing the frail ice that had sealed the puddles overnight—“Hazi tazi we got a Nazi hazi tazi…”—and they stopped by the dormant hedge of roses, obeying school rules to not leave the grounds until the final bell. “You’ll be in trouble,” they shouted after Caleb as he kept running, pressing his thighs together while dampness spread hot against his crotch, already cooling, smelly and heavy. Hazi tazi?

  Too ashamed to run home, he headed toward Weber’s Hardware and the lumberyard, past stone walls and the railroad station. On the other side of the tracks the snow was crusted, and upon it lay the shadows of bare birches, thin and black. Hazi tazi? He found a boulder, bare on top where the sun had heated it, though its base was still ringed by snow, and as he sat down, he pulled away from himself the way he often did and into a darkened movie theater—dark and warm and blue like the Royal—watching the screen where this boy sits with his knees against his chest, shivering, this boy who can’t figure out what to do next. All Caleb had to do was watch as the screen changed to a different day filled with sun while he and Emma leap from the five wide steps that lead up to the front door. Leap again and again. And then swing by their arms from the wrought-iron railings that run up along both sides of the steps to the posts with stained-glass lanterns. He wished he were fierce like Emma who got him to do things that were forbidden, like shinning from windows in the lobby or playing on the fire escape. Bossing him as if she were the older one. Looking out for him when tenants gave them candy, making sure he got as much as she did. A good climber, his sister. Not careful like he. Dreamer, his grandfather called him. Caleb didn’t mind. Liked knowing he could dream people and houses and clouds onto a movie screen and watch while dreaming, enter his world on the screen and be part of it while he made it up and embellished it. If that’s what it meant to be a dreamer, he was glad he was a dreamer.