Almost Everything Very Fast (10 page)

It was hardly the “right thing” to expose one’s father to such serious health risks.

He would have been glad to hear Sister Alfonsa’s opinion of this business. Whenever he thought of her, it was with a mixture of incredulity, exasperation, and melancholy. When dealing with orphans she was magnificent, in her way, though she had the irritating habit of doling out bits of wisdom that generally trailed behind them that most annoying of all promises: “You’ll understand that someday. When you’re grown.”

Albert was grown now, in fact was somewhat on the heavy side, and a smoker, and he had squired his father—who had no idea that he
was
a father—down the rectangular sewer pipe of a small Bavarian town on far too hot a summer day, in order to discover where his gold came from. And he had only five cigarettes left. And he wasn’t sure how much time had passed since Fred set off on his own. Thus far he hadn’t responded to Albert’s shouts. What if Fred needed him?

Hoping to distract himself, he opened Fred’s backpack and rooted through it. The first thing he found was the silver encyclopedia. He’d figured it would be there. And the tin box with the gold didn’t surprise him either. The condolence card, however, brought him up short. There was a picture of an outspread hand on it—five fingers. It was a reproduction of a charcoal drawing. Strong contrast of light and shadow, dirty-gray foggy background framed with heavily drawn lines. But something wasn’t right; the hand seemed imprisoned in the picture, as if it hadn’t been laid down on the paper from above, but rather was pressing up against its plane from the opposite side. Upon closer inspection, Albert realized that the drawing wasn’t a reproduction at all, but an original, and he asked himself how such a work could have wound up in Fred’s possession. On the other side of it, in spidery handwriting, he read:
Mama says getting older still always means being younger but I don’t know if that’s good or not..

Albert was familiar with the aphorism; it belonged to Fred’s standard repertoire. What irritated him was the two periods. They stared up at him like a pair of button eyes, neither ending the sentence nor indicating something further. They sat beside each other, stubborn, disturbingly wrong. Albert licked his thumb and attempted to rub one of them away, but merely blurred them, endowing them each with a sort of tail.

What if Fred needed him now? Albert called out to him again, listened, heard no answer. He put the card back. Every child knew that when you got lost, you shouldn’t go wandering off, but should stay in the same spot,
waiting
, thought Albert—and set off into the dark.

That struck him as righter.

Albert ran and paused, ran and paused. The diffuse light falling at intervals through storm drains and manhole covers only ever illuminated a couple of feet, then quickly dwindled again into darkness, leaving Albert to grope on with outstretched arms toward the next source of brightness. The sewer pipe’s walls were as greasy to the touch as they looked. To begin with, Albert kept to the right at every bifurcation of the tunnel, but soon gave up on this tactic, realizing he was going in circles.

Each of his calls was answered by an echo of
E-ed.

At the end of a narrow duct, he saw light. He moved toward it and discovered an exit covered with a metal grate, in which some sort of vegetable matter, looking and smelling like kelp, had gotten tangled. Beyond it, forest. Albert inhaled, savoring the fresh, cool air. For a long while now, he hadn’t heard a car above. It was possible he’d made his way out to the moor. All roads out of Königsdorf led to the moor. He shook the grate; it gave just a little, its mounting didn’t seem particularly stable. Maybe he could get it open. Albert wasn’t too keen on risking his life by ascending a shaft that emerged who knew where, maybe in the middle of some street where the locals went tear-assing around curves at eighty miles per hour. He took a step back, then kicked as hard as he could at the grate. It gave a little more. As he wound up for another kick, something stirred at the edge of the forest. A fox separated itself from the shade beneath a birch, and stood there staring at him. It hardly moved, only curling its tail a bit. Albert had never seen a fox in the wild before. The animal lifted its snout, never taking its eyes off of him.

“Albert!” came a shout from behind him. Fred arrived at a run, lugging both his backpack and Albert’s tote bag. “You shouldn’t run away!” he said, exasperated.

Albert glanced back over his shoulder. The fox had vanished. “Where’ve you been?”

“I was sleeping,” Fred said as if stating the obvious.

“Why?”

Fred passed him the tote bag. “Because I was tired. It’s very hot.”

Albert almost didn’t dare to ask, “Are we moving on now?”

After a brief pause, Fred nodded. “It’s very far.”

“I’ve noticed.”

Fred’s eyes fell on the grate. He pulled the plant matter from it. “My papa wants this to stay clean.”

“Now that that’s taken care of,” said Albert, “where to?”

Fred looked at him, surprised. “You aren’t very strict.”

“Oh yes I am strict!”

“No, Albert,” he said, grinning, “you’re ambrosial.”

“Maybe. A little,” said Albert, and smiled. “Because you’re doing okay. That’s important, understand?”

Fred nodded. “I always understand everything.”

They went back up the little duct. Fred was in the lead with his flashlight. Albert wasn’t feeling annoyed anymore, but optimistic. Soon they’d reach their goal, and then he’d be able to wash away this endless summer afternoon with a cold shower. How long could it possibly take before they’d threaded their way through the whole sewer system? It was only Königsdorf.

They made two more turns, and Fred shouted, “Ah!” They retraced their steps, made yet another turn, and ran up against a cul-de-sac. The treasure chest sitting there at the end of it did, in fact, look just like you’d expect a treasure chest to look: dark, moldy wood, battered edges, rusty lock. Fred indicated it with a sort of may-I-introduce-you gesture, and said, “My Most Beloved Possession.”

“I didn’t know you could have more than one of those,” said Albert.

“Only a couple.”

“And the gold was in there?”

“All Most Beloved Possessions come from there!”

Albert set down his tote bag, knelt before the chest, and opened it. There was a sticker pasted to the inner surface of the lid: a cartoon bear wearing red-and-white pants, sailing with outspread arms over the legend
Berlin-Tempelhof.

On the floor of the chest, precisely in the middle, parallel to the side walls, lay a snow-white lily. Albert lifted it and sniffed. Bittersweet odor of compost. The blossom was barely wilted. It couldn’t have been in the chest for more than a few hours.

“Why did you put it in there?”

“It wasn’t me,” said Fred.

Albert lifted an eyebrow.

“It really wasn’t!”

Albert smelled the lily again, though the odor made him uneasy, then passed it to Fred, who promptly buried his nose in the blossom. “What kind of flower is it?”

Albert told him.

“Then it’s for me. Lilies are specially for dead people.”

Albert shut the chest and sat down on it. Fred stroked the lily’s petals with his finger as if the flower were the head of a parakeet. “When I go dead, you’ll have to come down here and open the chest. Because when I go dead, I won’t be able to open the chest anymore.”

“Do me a favor and stop saying
dead.
”

Fred took off his Tyrolean hat, stuck the lily into the band beside the tuft, and put it on again. “Am I chic?”

“Extremely.”

Fred’s grin was lily-white.

“Frederick, I’d like you to tell me who put the flower in there.”

“My papa.”

“Have you spoken to him?”

“No.” Fred’s head sank, then sprang up again. “But I wished for a dead person’s flower from my papa, and now there’s a dead person’s flower there!”

Albert quietly repeated the words “Now there’s a dead person’s flower there,” which from Fred’s mouth sounded so plausible, so unquestionably true. From Albert’s they seemed so insubstantial—he felt stupid just having them in his head, let alone on his lips.

“Okay then.” Albert rose to his feet, clapped his hands, and spoke loudly into the darkness, “I wish for an ice-cold lemonade!” He flung open the lid of the chest.

Fred stared at him.

“Oh. Didn’t work. Oh well. These things happen. Try again.” He flipped the lid closed with a bang.

Fred winced.

“Maybe that wish didn’t come from the heart,” said Albert, feeling his rage swell. “How about this: I wish for some sign … No, why be so modest when you’ve got a chest of wonders? … Dear spirit of the chest, I wish for my mother.” Lid up. “There you go. It’s obviously busy at the moment. Ah well. Good things come to those who …” He gave the chest a kick. “How about we ask for your papa, hmm? Or our family tree? Or a smaller heart for you?”

Albert wasn’t bothering to check the chest anymore.

“Are you angry?” asked Fred.

“What makes you think that?”

Fred opened the chest. “Albert! Look!” He reached in and pulled out the bear sticker.

“A miracle,” said Albert. And then he saw that on the underside of the lid, at the spot the sticker had covered, four words were written:
My Most Beloved Possession.
Again, that ornate schoolgirl’s hand.

Fred put the sticker in his backpack. “My papa likes giving me things.”

“Have you ever seen him?”

“No.” Fred leaned forward. “Have
you
ever seen him?”

“No, Fred. No, I haven’t.”

Before they began the trek homeward, Fred asked for refreshments. They sat back-to-back on the chest, sharing the bread they’d brought along, the peeled carrots, the bananas, and washed it all down with the apple spritzer. Fred ate with tremendous appetite, and though Albert was just as hungry, he held back so that Fred would have his fill.

They’d barely been under way for five minutes when Albert’s thoughts started off again. It was his own fault: he couldn’t fool himself. Whenever he tried it, a second voice immediately piped up in his head, contradicting him; and when the argument of these voices ran into a cul-de-sac, a third voice intervened, summing things up; and that summation was then pronounced aloud in a fourth voice, Albert’s own. In this case it said, “Are you sure, Fred, that nobody but you knows about the chest?”

Fred said, “No.”

“I mean, apart from you and your papa.”

“Besides my papa and me, only one person knows the chest is there.”

“Who?”

“You.”

Albert’s fingers fidgeted, they yearned to be holding a cigarette. To calm them he shoved his hands into his pockets and gripped the makeup compact.

Fred scratched at his nose. “You shouldn’t be sad because you don’t have a lily. Everyone will get a dead person’s flower eventually. Even you.”

“You think so.”

Emphatic nodding. “Definitely!”

Albert let go of the mirror and set down the tote bag. He stood on his tiptoes, took the hat from Fred’s head, and looked again at the lily. He ran his thumb along the stem. It had been cut smoothly. With a knife. Or a pair of garden shears.

Though his heart had been more or less calm ever since they’d left the sewers, the moment Albert stepped onto the property of Fred’s neighbor and read the name beside the door—
Klondi
, written out in a lovely schoolgirlish script—it immediately lost its cool, and he had trouble concealing the fact from Fred, who was waiting behind him while, for the second time in two days, he stood with lifted finger at a front door, and hesitated before ringing the bell.

“Albert?”

“Yes?”

“You have to ring.”

The gentle summer air was certainly more pleasant to breathe than that oxygen paste in the sewers, but now that he was outside again, at approximately three in the afternoon, Albert felt exposed. Too much space to think. Clearly delineated boundaries, like those at a Catholic orphanage, for instance, were more his speed. Only, how could you build a wall inside your head? How did you keep yourself from thinking: Klondi. It can’t be Klondi. Can it be Klondi?

Fred rang.

“Thanks,” said Albert.

“You’re welcome,” said Fred.

“Over here,” called a husky female voice from the garden. Fred and Albert stepped around the house, whose balcony slanted down and to the right like a lopsided smile. Klondi was sitting on a little patch of turf by the frog pond. Five years had gone by since Albert had come to ask her about his mother. The years hadn’t changed her, except that she now wore her silver-gray hair down and at shoulder-length. As they approached she plucked one greenish noodle after another from the saucepan lying in her lap, stuck their ends into her mouth, and sucked them in through her lips.

“Want a taste?” she asked. Albert declined. Fred dropped his eyes to the ground and flared his nostrils, semaphoring
Yes.
Klondi passed him a handful of noodles, which dangled from her fist like earthworms, and, taking them, he imitated her suction technique.

“It’s just like
Lady and the Tramp
, without dogs,” he said.

“I plucked the wild garlic myself. Sure you won’t partake?” asked Klondi, and offered the pot to Albert, who could feel his hunger waxing.

“No appetite.”

Fred and Klondi went on slurping happily. Which Albert endured for another minute and a half. Then he said, “We’ve found a Hansel and Gretel crumb,” and Klondi stopped eating and looked at him. Albert pointed to the lily in Fred’s Tyrolean hat.

“This isn’t the right time,” she said.

Albert was glad she wasn’t trying to lie. “I don’t think there
is
a right time for this.”

“But there’s a better one,” she said through gritted teeth, from which green shreds of wild garlic hung, and nodded at Fred, who was fishing in the frog pond with a long noodle.

“Can you wait here for a minute, Fred?” said Albert. “Klondi wants to show me something in the house.”