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

  “Against decadence and moral collapse . . . I relegate to the flame the writings of Heinrich Mann . . . of Erich Kästner . . .”

  Fräulein Siderova thought of Jews all over Germany, curved toward their radios behind locked doors, while the savage crowds shouted about cleansing literature, and she wondered if they, too, were thinking how two crucial changes in their country were brought about by fire.

  “Neues Leben, neues Schrifttum, neuer Glaube blühe aus den Ruinen—new life, new writing, new belief shall blossom from the ruins.”

  Couldn’t they hear how, in their enthusiasm to cleanse, they contaminated language?

  On the radio a pause, then crackling and an interview with a professor of literature who stated it was better to burn too many books than to miss a single one. This from a professor of literature? He surely had to know Heine’s words “Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen—where they burn books, they will ultimately also burn people.”

  *

  Flames tore into the spines of the books, into their soft centers. People were taking off their hats and kerchiefs. Their heads were bare as they sang: “Nun danket alle Gott—now let us all thank God.”

  After that: “Sieg Heil.” Three times.

  A haze shivered around the flames and smoke, like a second breath, and Thekla wondered if standing here meant she was one of these people. Sick with fear, she tried to step away but was trapped between the crowd and the Rathaus. Until now, she had taken for granted that she had moral courage, but suddenly she didn’t know if it was possible to defer moral courage, conserve it, and if it would still be there for her, or if each moment like this would take her into another silent agreement, and another yet, until she’d find herself agreeing to what she’d never imagined, and she would have to adjust what she believed about herself.

  Chapter 33

  SOME BOOKS WERE still smoldering at dawn, but most had disintegrated to ashes when the cleaning crews shoveled them into wheelbarrows, swept the market square, and hauled away the debris.

  Yet, the charred remains got tracked throughout the village, got inside your houses, and soiled your floors even if you hadn’t been near the pyre. As the smell of wet ashes seeped through your closed windows and doors, it settled in your bedding, your clothing, your wardrobes. The affront of that smell—flat and nasty—made you want to spit. You were sure you’d never get used to it; and yet despite your ceaseless scrubbing and airing, it would become part of your own smell, in your breath, on your skin, increasingly familiar.

  *

  When Fräulein Siderova arrived at the Catholic school, the corridors were slick with black mud that children and teachers were dragging in on their soles though Sister Mäuschen reminded them to wipe their feet. She’d brought out every floor mat she’d found in the school and in the convent, but already these, too, were turning soggy, black.

  Fräulein Siderova didn’t let her students see how shaken she was. She steadied herself by following her lesson plan on the Trojan War. Last week they’d started by sketching the colossal draft horse behind the brewery. When they’d voted on which sketch to use for their papier-mâché sculpture of the Trojan horse, Markus Bachmann’s had won. The boys had brought in newspapers and fabric scraps and horsehair and bits of fur. Together, they’d built a magnificent horse with a trapdoor in the underside of its belly.

  For today, they’d brought toy soldiers, miniature German soldiers with helmets that the boys stashed inside the horse’s belly, though Bruno objected that they were not authentic.

  “We don’t have any Greek soldiers,” Richard said.

  “Once they’re inside, you won’t see them,” Andreas said.

  “But I’ll know,” Bruno said.

  Fräulein Siderova praised the boys when they read their assignment aloud, one paragraph told in the voice of their favorite character from the passages she’d read to them in the Iliad. Nearly half of the boys chose Achilles, the brave and handsome Greek hero; three were Paris, also brave and handsome, but a Trojan hero. Two each were Ajax, the tallest warrior, and Homer, who’d written it all down. One Zeus. One Poseidon.

  For Sonja Siderova it had always been Cassandra, fascinating and influential. Cassandra, blessed by Apollo to see into the future. But when she resisted his courtship, Apollo revenged himself with the curse that no one would give credence to her prophesies.

  *

  That afternoon, the principal of the Catholic school knocked on the door of the house where Thekla lived with her parents. “Can you start teaching tomorrow?” she asked.

  “Tomorrow?” Thekla stopped breathing.

  One day’s notice to start the work she’d been longing for? The honor of that. While countless others were still waiting. All those years Fräulein Siderova had encouraged her to believe she would find a position. She’d reminded her principal that Thekla Jansen was her best student ever, and would be an inspiring teacher. And now Sister Josefine was here as though Fräulein Siderova had sent her, with her wide, wide shoulders and trim waist, the body of a horseback rider that her nun’s habit couldn’t conceal.

  “Would you like to come inside?” Thekla asked.

  “No.”

  The wet smell of ashes spun around Sister Josefine, sealed her and Thekla in that moment of standing outside the door.

  “Yes,” Thekla said and already pictured herself telling Fräulein Siderova . . . the joy in her kind face.

  “Please,” Thekla said.

  “Tomorrow,” Thekla said.

  “Fourth grade,” Sister Josefine said,

  “But that’s Fräulein Siderova’s class!” Thekla cried out. She was ready to tell Sister Josefine she couldn’t take the class from her teacher. Started to say, “Please, don’t—”

  But she stopped herself. At least they hadn’t arrested Fräulein Siderova like Herr Zimmer, who’d also lost his teaching job at the Protestant school. But Herr Zimmer was a Jew and a communist. While Fräulein Siderova was more Catholic than Jewish. A child when she left Russia. Certainly no reason to be considered a communist.

  “Tomorrow,” Thekla told Sister Josefine before she could stop herself, in her belly that familiar queasiness of doing something wrong. Knowing she was doing something wrong and still doing it. “I’ll be at school tomorrow.”

  The instant Sister Josefine left with that long stride of hers—you know how she walks, Fräulein Siderova, flaunting her muscles through the cloth of her habit—Thekla started toward Fräulein Siderova’s house to warn her.

  Except I did not walk that far. Only up to the corner. Still, she could see herself running to Schlosserstrasse and up the stairs to Fräulein Siderova’s apartment. But then it occurred to her how awkward it would be if Sister Josefine were to find her there. She couldn’t jeopardize the teaching position. For both of us. Better to wait a few hours. Once Sister Josefine had told Fräulein Siderova, Thekla would return, console her teacher, assure her that she’d do whatever she could to bring her back to school.

  She went home. Wrote her lesson plan for Fräulein Siderova’s students. It was evening then, too late for a proper visit, and she promised herself she’d go the following afternoon.

  Chapter 34

  BUT IN THE MORNING Fräulein Siderova walked into the teachers’ lounge, elegant and swift as always, while Thekla was still unbuttoning her camel hair coat. She wanted to hide, but Fräulein Siderova grasped her hands, face so radiant that Thekla thought she had to be the most forgiving person on earth.

  “Does this mean they finally hired you, Thekla?”

  That’s when I knew you hadn’t been told. And I felt like a Judas.

  “Now we’ll be colleagues.” Fräulein Siderova bent toward her. “I’m ecstatic . . . for you and for me.”

  Thekla tried to speak.

  “Which grade will you be teaching?”

  Thekla’s throat felt raw. “Fourth.”

  Fräulein Siderova hooked two fingertips across the silver rims of her spectacl
es. Closed her eyes. “I see,” she whispered. As if she could. See. See how her tolerance for the fear of others would change until she’d feel brittle, forlorn when she’d read to the dying; how she would receive fewer requests and how people would speculate that fear was clotting inside her; how they’d speak to the priest about their concerns, but not to her because they’d be embarrassed to draw her into their midst while trying to avoid her; how they’d whisper that she wanted to keep herself separate from them because certain family treasures came into her possession; how the pharmacist would accuse her openly of having his mother’s vase, and how she’d remind him that his mother gave it to her the night she died, and how he’d tell her she must have done something to make his mother give her the vase.

  “I left the vase with the priest,” Fräulein Siderova said.

  “Which vase?” Thekla asked.

  “For the pharmacist.”

  “I—I didn’t ask Sister Josefine for your position.”

  “Of course you didn’t ask.” As Fräulein Siderova slid off her spectacles, they dropped to the floor. Tiny veins on her smooth eyelids, veins barely raised from the translucent skin.

  To retrieve them, Thekla crouched by the long library table. One of its legs was smaller than the others, the wood lighter, as though it had been replaced. Why hadn’t she noticed before? It seemed an important question, a question to wrap her soul around.

  “I’ve always taught girls,” Fräulein Siderova was saying. “When Sister Josefine gave me a class of boys this spring, I should have known. . . .”

  Thekla felt odd to be kneeling at her feet. Specks of ashes. Dustings of ashes. When she handed up the spectacles, Fräulein Siderova’s fingers didn’t close around them.

  “I’m sorry.” Carefully, Thekla folded the spectacles. Slipped them into the pocket of Fräulein Siderova’s silk jacket.

  “Still . . . ,” Fräulein Siderova said. “Still . . . better you than one of them.”

  One of them? Do you know how that cut through me? “I don’t even think of you as Jewish,” Thekla said.

  Fräulein Siderova’s chin puckered, deepening that oblong dimple.

  “You pray at St. Martin’s,” Thekla said. “You sing in the church choir. I’ll tell Sister Josefine about the Christmas angels you make with your students.”

  Couldn’t you feel how I wanted to help you? Just as you had helped me, inviting me into the classroom to get teaching experience.

  Suddenly, Thekla knew what she had to do to save the position for Fräulein Siderova. “I’ll teach your class till you come back,” she promised, “only till then.”

  Tuesday, February 27, 1934

  Chapter 35

  LAMPLIGHT BEHIND the bay window at Schlosserstrasse 78.

  In the stairway the familiar mint smell that blots all other smells.

  When Fräulein Siderova opens the door—bedsheets in her arms, used sheets in a bundle—Thekla’s childhood love for her teacher rushes at her so strongly that she doesn’t know how she survived without that love.

  “I must tell you—”

  But Fräulein Siderova turns from her, carries the sheets into the bathroom.

  Grateful she didn’t close the door, Thekla runs after her, slips around her to open the hamper. Pulse in her throat so high she can’t say another word, she waits for Fräulein Siderova to look at her, but her teacher simply drops the sheets inside the hamper, gets fresh sheets from the shelves, and takes them to the spare room.

  Lined up under the edge of the bed are two slippers. The mattress is bare. Have you been expecting me? Thekla feels disoriented. Are you getting the bed ready for me? How do you know I can no longer live at the Stosicks’? She could imagine living here with Fräulein Siderova, walk to school just as her teacher used to. Selfish—Selfish for not thinking about Bruno every second. Selfish for her relief that she no longer has to have that conversation with the Stosicks about Bruno climbing from his window at night. She forces herself to imagine him beneath the ground. But not yet. For now, he is still inside his house. So light in my arms when I hold him at his christening celebration. I’m still at the university, and I have no idea that this long, skinny baby who doesn’t cry will be in my first group of students and that he’ll take his own life. Bruno—

  How then do you reach into this with both hands, Fräulein Siderova, and change Bruno’s fate?

  *

  “How then—” Thekla breaks off.

  How dare I ask this? You believed you could change fate. But what if it was predetermined that Bruno would kill himself when he was ten? And what if it was predetermined that you would set out geraniums for a butterfly? And what if it was predetermined that Almut and Michel would make a child?

  Thekla picks up a pillow, shakes it, and inserts it in the pillowcase. Though Fräulein Siderova presses her lips together, she does not object. Together they unfold the bottom sheet and make the bed as they have made beds with others, though never together. Thekla steps around the slippers, large—men’s slippers?—not of good quality, one heel so worn it slants toward the other.

  Once I tell you what happened to Bruno, tell you everything, Fräulein Siderova, will you send me away forever? Or will you say that I did all I could for our boys? Will you tell me to lie down on this ironed sheet, cover me, and tell me to sleep?

  “I lost one of your boys,” Thekla whispers. “Bruno—he’s dead.”

  Like a blind woman, Sonja Siderova reaches behind herself with both hands, pats the air till her fingers touch the mattress. Awkwardly, she lowers herself.

  “I was keeping him safe.” Thekla is crying. “I followed him to the rallies at night to keep him safe and . . .”

  Sonja has to concentrate, hard, because it’s coming at her without sequence: Frau Doktor Rosen rushing inside the Stosicks’ house and Bruno saying his father wants the Führer strung up and the boys climbing willows and Frau Stosick finding Bruno inside the chess wardrobe and Herr Stosick tracking Thekla to the Rhein and people outside the Stosicks’ house hoping against hope that Bruno is still alive—

  “But why?” she moans.

  —and Leo Montag leading Herr Stosick into the house and the boys counting barges and the police finding Bruno’s pledge to the Führer in his pocket and birds hanging like silver triangles in the sky and—

  Sonja Siderova’s eyes are so desolate that Thekla fears one more detail will break her. “I’m so sorry. I feel terrible.”

  “You?” Sonja cries. “Is that why you came here? To be comforted by me?”

  “No—I came because I owed you . . . the telling.”

  “Then tell me. Now.”

  *

  Thekla does: the awful pressure of Herr Stosick’s belly against hers and the police saying Bruno wore his uniform in the wardrobe and Gisela Stosick interrupting the teachers’ meeting—

  But that’s before Bruno’s death, when his mother interrupts the meeting. It doesn’t have to be now. It can be before that. When Bruno runs up the stairs, brings me cake his mother has baked—

  But she feels it slipping away, that illusion. “I should be at the Stosicks’ house, helping . . . also if they have questions—But they wouldn’t want me there.”

  Sonja Siderova averts her face.

  “When Bruno was crying in school, he must have been planning to kill himself. . . . I should have seen how agitated he was when he said his father wanted the Führer strung up by his balls.”

  Now Sonja is crying, too. “Bruno didn’t know what he was doing.”

  “I think he knew.”

  “Children don’t always understand the danger of their words.”

  “He was hoping someone would turn his father in.”

  “No.” Sonja Siderova rubs the bridge of her nose. “He probably just wanted his father out of the way so he could go to his meetings. He never pictured the Gestapo coming to his house and hauling his father away.”

  “I think he wanted them to take him away. Maybe just for an hour, or a few minut
es. But it destroyed him. Oh, God. I should have—” Thekla’s head is clogged with Bruno’s smell, not the clean sweat smell of her athletic students, but the child-smell of chalk and sleep. Sleep forever.

  No—Not yet. I can go back to before your christening, Bruno, long before, when your mother is still a girl, hiding on that platform high in a tree, perhaps dreaming herself a son while we search for her. We won’t find her until the sky pales around the stars and fades their outlines. But Bruno’s death pushes itself past the christening and the platform.

  “Oh God . . . Bruno—” I should have carried you home from the rally, snatched you into my arms and run with you from the pomp and the lies and the bonfire. “What have I been teaching these children? You would have discouraged the boys from joining the Hitler-Jugend. You could see that the parades and uniforms were to get them enthusiastic about being heroes.”

  “It’s what’s done to soldiers everywhere. Except they’re starting very young here. Child soldiers.”

  “Jochen Weskopp wants to be a soldier. A hero.”

  “Children absorb what they are taught. And if the teaching is corrupt—”

  “That’s why Remarque is banned. Because he wrote about students influenced to romanticize war by—”

  “By their teachers, yes. Instead they ended up terrified in the ditches, minds and bodies injured by bullets and nerve gas.”

  “And Jochen is eight whole years younger than those students. He says after he’s a soldier he’ll be dead. No fear. No doubt.”

  “The absence of doubt will turn humans into beasts.”

  Thekla flinches. How quickly her boys formed a pack.

  “You may survive all this, even I . . . but some of our boys already have half their lives behind them. They’ll be dead or wounded before they’re twenty. Kanonenfutter—cannon fodder.”

  “What can we do?”

  “You’ll teach. You’ll keep our boys alive.”

  “I wasn’t able to keep Bruno alive.” What happens if you’re no longer who you believed you were? What do you do with the knowledge of that? And what if who you’re becoming goes against what you believed about yourself until you won’t remember who you were before?