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

She knows how to adapt, even to the fear that has been pulling the people together ever since the Reichstag burned. No longer the splintering of many groups. No longer the humiliation of Versailles. Instead: unity, a half-remembered pride. What matters to her is that her boys are thriving. The rest she’ll wait out.

  But Emil doesn’t grasp the complexity.

  “It’s not about enthusiasm for the Nazis, only enthusiasm for what they can do for my students,” she told him two weekends ago, when they were riding their bicycles to Düsseldorf to eat in the Altstadt.

  “And how do you separate that?”

  He was in an argumentative mood, told her his gymnasts’ club had lost two more athletes to the SA sports club. Already his official membership was low because Jews were excluded from sports clubs.

  “But I let them train before dawn,” he told her.

  “I don’t want to know that.” She pedaled faster, swerved ahead of him.

  “You would do the same,” he shouted after her.

  *

  A truck rumbles past the schoolhouse, the pigeons scatter, and in that flicker of motion and light, the students raise their heads, sniffing blood though there is no blood, not yet, only this truck with animals in back, heading for the slaughterhouse. Used to be only carts that delivered animals there, but more trucks now, modern and fast.

  Their rabbits and chickens people kill in their backyards where the ground soaks up blood. But pigs and cattle get hauled to the slaughterhouse, eyes rolling white in their sockets, seeking you inside your nightmares with squealing that sounds human.

  Enough—

  Corn for the pigeons, Thekla reminds herself. They’re like beggars, always hungry, scavenging. If she were to hold one in her hands, it would squirm—dirty and warm, scrawny, not sleek and pampered like the pigeons her Vater used to raise in the coop on the flat part of their roof. Suddenly she misses them.

  *

  As a child, she used to climb the stairs to the roof early in the morning, whenever Vati was at the asylum in Grafenberg. A few kernels on her shoulders, she’d wait for the tamest birds, Aphrodite and Zeus, wait for the luscious quiver of wings against her throat and ears, that guttural echo from deep within their feather-breasts. Only then would she toss corn to the other pigeons.

  Evenings she’d sweep the wooden floorboards of their coop and refill their drinking water while they’d preen and strut for her. The year she was seven, Vati told her the legends of the gods who inspired the names for his pigeons.

  Athena . . . Poseidon . . . Eris . . .

  That was when he still climbed from his darkness for a month, say, or a few days, and those hands of his could build anything: the pigeon coop, a cupboard, planters. Wednesday evenings he’d let Thekla stay up late—not her little brothers, just Thekla—and walk with her to the Burgdorf Tauben Klub—pigeon club, where he was president for almost three months.

  Artemis . . . Hebe . . . Eros . . .

  Some of them eaten. Pigeon soup Mutti cooked when there was nothing else. Pigeon stew. Insignificant, the meat, once you separated it from feather and bone. But the best racers Vati saved for breeding.

  Hestia . . . Apollo . . . Dionysus . . .

  Thekla’s first poem was about a Racing Homer, Athena. Frau Abramowitz wrote it down for her because she was five, could tell the poem, not write it. Athena flew out of her father’s head. That’s where babies came from. Athena flew across the Rhein, carrying an olive tree for her Uncle Poseidon. A wolf caught Athena. But she flew away and hid in a house with three beds. One small, one medium, one big. Athena slept in every bed. Then she ate the pudding. The End.

  *

  Thekla smiles to herself. That poem . . . it came from everywhere, from legends and fairy tales and superstitions, and from what surrounded her. All equally real. She enjoys that age when everything is still equally real for children, that age before they believe grownups who’ll tell them what’s real and what’s not. If Thekla were given a choice, she’d ask to teach first graders, because for them it’s still all real.

  “Fräulein?” Heinz says and then adds something she can’t make out because it’s in his Bavarian dialect.

  But she’s pleased he’s speaking at all. Only two weeks ago his family moved here, and he’s been quiet in her classroom, as if Hochdeutsch—High German were a foreign language for him.

  How would you get him to engage, Fräulein Siderova? Be patient? Nudge him with encouragement? He seems to understand much of what I say but can’t express himself.

  I wish I could visit you, bring you one of the gifts I’ve been collecting for you. Maybe the little glass figure of the ballerina that’ll remind you of taking ballet lessons as a girl in Russia? I can almost feel it in my hand. My hand inside my coat pocket as I walk toward your apartment. But the closer I get, the more nervous I am. I slow my steps. Stop at Alexander Sturm’s new apartment building. When I reach Schlosserstrasse 78, I stand on the street below your bay window. I ring the bell, climb the steps into the mint smell that started with one plant I gave you. You separated the new shoots, giving them to others in your building until every landing had a pottery box with mint on the windowsill. You open your door, lift the glass ballerina to the light, admire her profile, unadorned and graceful. “Oh, Thekla,” you say and set it on the glass shelf in your flower window. “How exquisite.”

  The smell of mint—

  *

  —so strong that Thekla is startled to be standing in her classroom.

  Too soon—

  Too soon to come to you, Fräulein Siderova.

  “Heinz?” She takes a step toward the desk where he sits next to Otto, in the space that used to be Markus’s.

  Quickly, he glances down, hides his eyes behind hair that’s longer than the other students’.

  “The way I talk,” she whispers to him, “must sound funny to you.”

  He covers his mouth. Giggles behind his palm. He’s far too thin. She can tell it’s from hunger, not his build: wrists and elbows too large for his arms, sunken cheeks.

  If I can teach my Vater, I can teach anyone. When skin becomes speech. Language. Words. And I the translator.

  Yet, how much lost in the translation? Marinus van der Lubbe had a translator. A photo of them together in the paper, the young Dutchman not looking one bit like an arsonist, but rather innocent and a bit sullen. He was used to being poor: a father who left after Marinus was born, an accident at a jobsite that kept Marinus from continuing as a bricklayer, an invalid’s pension.

  If Marinus had been your student, Fräulein Siderova, he would have known how to handle himself in public. If only all the boys of the world could come to you for their education, they would grow up to be polite and kind. Dress and behave to their advantage. No bullies.

  1903

  September

  Chapter 14

  FRAU ABRAMOWITZ TOOK the fairy-tale book from a shelf, sat at the gleaming table, and lifted Thekla onto her lap. Her dress was cool against Thekla’s arm, and yet it smelled hot, that familiar smell of Mutti’s hot iron and starch and Henkel’s bleaching soda. Thekla made herself be quiet, well mannered, while Frau Abramowitz read to her about Dornröschen, who was cursed by a wicked fairy. But three good fairies changed the curse from death into a long, long sleep. A sleep of a hundred years before a prince rescued Dornröschen with his kiss.

  “Just like this,” Frau Abramowitz said and kissed Thekla’s cheek. “Ask if you want anything. Anything at all.”

  What is anything at all? Chocolate cigarettes? A pony? Thekla’s heart was bumping. She’d never stayed in the Abramowitzes’ house without Mutti.

  “You’re my beautiful girl,” Frau Abramowitz said.

  Everything the Abramowitzes had was beautiful. Beautiful pillows. Beautiful windows. Beautiful books. Beautiful fruit not bruised by falling, or by time. And now she was Frau Abramowitz’s beautiful girl.

  Thekla pointed to the fancy doll on top of the glass cabinet. “Can I play with your doll?”


  “That’s a carving of St. Anthony of Padua. He’s the patron saint of all we’ve lost. . . .”

  “Can I play with your saint?”

  Frau Abramowitz stood up and handed him to Thekla. “Sonja Siderova gave him to me. She must think I need a Catholic saint.” Then she unlocked her cabinet and took out three photo albums. She had an entire row of albums, a separate one for each faraway place.

  Thekla held on to the wooden saint when they sat on the sofa, where Frau Abramowitz spread out her albums and opened thick pages with pictures—elephants and palaces and birds—held in place by black photo corners.

  “Venezuela.” Frau Abramowitz pointed to one.

  Then to another. “Venice.”

  When Thekla tried out both names, Frau Abramowitz taught her how to pronounce them. She was always teaching Thekla something.

  “Someday you’ll travel the world, too,” she said. “Just wait.”

  Wait? But then how come Mutti said Frau Abramowitz didn’t know about waiting? “That woman doesn’t know about waiting,” Mutti had said, “she buys it right away. But even she cannot buy everything she wants.”

  *

  After Frau Abramowitz locked her albums away and positioned her saint back on top of the cabinet, she took Thekla’s hand in hers and walked with her to the post office to mail a letter, then to the grocery store to buy groceries for lunch.

  At the pay-library, Herr Montag told Frau Abramowitz, “I’ve been saving a special book for you.”

  Her face turned pink. “Thank you.”

  On the cover of the book a doctor and a nurse leaned toward each other across a bed. In the bed lay a man who had bandages all around his body and forehead.

  The earache sound of piano music came through the wall.

  Frau Abramowitz shook her head. “No one plays like your father.”

  Herr Montag winced. “Let’s be grateful for that.”

  Thekla was allowed to carry the library book across the street to the Abramowitzes’ house, where Herr Abramowitz was already home from his law office, reading the newspaper.

  “I understand you’re here by yourself today,” he said.

  She ran to him, inhaled the scent of his pipe, cherries and smoke. “Mutti went with Vati to his doctor.”

  “In Grafenberg,” Herr Abramowitz said.

  Thekla pretended to read the back of his newspaper. Waited for him to see her read.

  And then he did. And nodded. “It makes me happy that you’re visiting me.”

  She knew that was true. Because it made him happy to visit her house. After those visits there was always something she hadn’t had before: new shoes, watercolors, toys, a white Himmelbettchen—canopy bed. Though she liked his gifts, they made her feel odd—being poor but looking rich—setting her apart not only from her family but from other families on the block. Yet, it was here that it started, the sense that she deserved more than others, and with it the uneasiness that they envied her.

  *

  At the table that Mutti had polished, Thekla sat with the Abramowitzes and chewed with her mouth closed. She knew how to. And how to stop her feet from banging against the legs of her chair. Now the Abramowitzes could see how nice it was to have a child who ate and played quietly. Who didn’t get food on her face.

  Frau Abramowitz showed her to keep her elbows and wrists off the table. “Like that, remember?” she asked, gently. “Proper manners will help you through any situation. They’re like safety straps in a streetcar. You can always hold on if the streetcar rattles along.”

  “What if you are too little to reach the straps?” Herr Abramowitz asked and winked at Thekla.

  Frau Abramowitz tilted her chin toward him. “Then we’ll have to adjust the straps . . . bring them to your level.”

  He puckered his lips. “Amusing.”

  “I’m good at amusing myself.”

  After lunch Thekla took her nap in the guest room, where she often napped while Mutti cleaned up in the kitchen. Except Mutti wasn’t here. On the white bed she soon fell asleep to the sound of Herr Abramowitz’s telephone voice in the living room—not all quiet-gone like Vati’s voice.

  But when she woke up, Herr Abramowitz’s voice was gone, too. She slid from the mattress and ran into the living room to find him. Only sun, here, yellow on the walls. Yellow on the shelf with his cameras. Yellow on her eyelids and her hair. Yellow on the wood panels as tall as she. Yellow on the telephone. Sometimes neighbors asked to use the telephone, and the Abramowitzes always said yes. If Thekla had a telephone, she would let her neighbors use it, too. Tracing one finger along the top edge of the panels, she followed her finger, pretending the house with its shining parquet floors and Persian carpets belonged to her. She stopped. Sniffed the harsh smell of old tobacco. Above her hung a pipe rack, too high for her to touch. Pinching her nostrils shut, she swirled away from the smell, one swirl, two, three—

  On the piano bench lay the pay-library book, its cellophane cover taped in the space between the nurse’s mouth and the doctor’s mouth. Thekla’s Mutti liked to say Frau Abramowitz read trash. “All that book learning and refinement, and that woman reads trash.”

  The piano was like the wing of a stork . . . white, curved. On top a glass bowl with grapes. Miniature frames with photos. Of many Abramowitzes now and long ago. When Thekla touched the grapes, they were like water, green and light. She saw herself setting them into Vati’s hands and following him to a place all green and light. It was about reaching him through touch, about shifting his empty hands on his knees so the palms curved up and could hold slippery mud, a sun-baked rock, a scratchy sponge, a sieve. Different textures and temperatures. Then she’d draw pictures of what brought him back into his eyes.

  *

  If only Frau Abramowitz were awake. Thekla would ask her if she could eat a grape. Frau Abramowitz would say yes. Thekla could almost taste the grape. Climbing onto the bench, she plucked one grape from its stem. Green, it tasted so green that she ate another. She glanced toward the stairway. Still quiet. Another grape yet, and with it a bliss and belonging. Till the ends of most stems were jagged.

  And I didn’t ask. Didn’t—

  Steps in the hallway above. Quickly, Thekla lifted the bunch of grapes, rotated it till the ugly stems were underneath—not as high as before, the bunch, oh—tugged here, there, rotated the bowl. Fled to the white bed. Pulled the cover to her mouth when Frau Abramowitz came in. Her belly felt sick. Her belly and legs and throat. What did I do wrong? Is it stealing . . . eating grapes without asking?

  All afternoon, she felt anxious. This was how it was going to happen: Frau Abramowitz would lift the bunch of grapes. Find the empty stems. Now she would never let Thekla come back here.

  At dinner, Thekla couldn’t swallow. Her tongue felt prickly. Her tongue and also where she swallowed, down inside.

  “What is it, Kindchen?” Herr Abramowitz wanted to know.

  If only I’d eaten just one grape.

  Ask, Frau Abramowitz had told her, for anything you want. And she could have wanted anything. But the asking had to come first.

  Maybe I can still ask—

  Sick with shame, Thekla pointed to the grapes.

  Frau Abramowitz lifted them. Spider stems. Her lips trembled.

  “It’s a difficult time for her mother right now, Ilse,” Herr Abramowitz started. “You—”

  “It is always a difficult time for Almut. That endless . . . needing.”

  “You have to understand how—”

  “How often do I have to understand, Michel?” Tears on Frau Abramowitz’s chin. She wiped them aside with her fingertips, but more kept coming. “Tell me. How often?”

  The shame in Thekla’s belly skated on the water of grapes, dizzied her. “I’m sorry.” She tried her best smile, the one she could fasten on people till they smiled back.

  Face wet, Frau Abramowitz tried to smile back. But only one side of her mouth went up. “Those grapes were for you, too . . . but not only for you.
” On the white tablecloth, her hand drifted toward Thekla, stroked her arm. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “You know and I know,” Herr Abramowitz said, “that this has nothing to do with grapes.”

  “She’s like her mother. Greedy—”

  “Enough. Please.”

  “—like her mother. And you like it, that greed in her.” Frau Abramowitz raised her face. Tears on her neck, now. Tears she no longer tried to wipe away.

  Tuesday, February 27, 1934

  Chapter 15

  HEINZ CAN SMELL HIMSELF. Camphor and dust. He was going to tell everyone about his birthday next week and the bicycle he’s hoping for, but the other boys will just laugh at him. What if they can smell him, too? It’s the smell of his dead grandparents’ tiny house. His father says the grandparents had enough money to buy a castle, that their only joy came from spending as little as possible. All their money is hidden between the pages of books, behind pictures and furniture. Heinz is still finding banknotes—five hundred million marks, one billion marks, one hundred billion marks, one trillion marks—printed before his birth when the government kept printing new money and his father’s boss paid his employees from a wheelbarrow full of banknotes that they spent quickly because in an hour it might be worthless.

  His mother has told him that when she was pregnant with him, she had to pay millions for a loaf of bread. Bank accounts and bonds went kaputt. His parents’ neighbor killed herself. His father’s cousin.

  But now people are beginning to hope again, his father said. Because the Führer is bringing back jobs. For everyone. Jobs and prosperity. His mother has been documenting the family’s Aryan lineage for the Ahnenpass—ancestor report. She has told Heinz how genealogy used to be for the aristocracy only, but now it’s for ordinary citizens, too. Whenever she finds out interesting details—like that her grandmother was fifteen years older than her grandfather and outlived him—she tells Heinz and his father during Abendessen—dinner.