Almost Everything Very Fast (31 page)

Though I didn’t find much rest there, I took advantage of the little sleeper’s open ear.

“I’ve never really seen myself as a father. And I still don’t see myself as one
.

“Maybe it’s enough if you and your mother do. Her faith—and not just in our wedding—is stronger than Pastor Meier’s.

“When you’re older, think twice about whether or not you want to have kids. I’m telling you, you can’t anticipate the consequences.

“You might wake up one day and realize that you love them!

“Or the opposite. Look at your aunt. The magnitude of her disappointment at having given life to a Klöble corresponds to the frequency and intensity of her head-shaking. Nobody understands that she doesn’t do it because she’s saying no, but rather because she’s glancing left and right, on the lookout for a better life.

“The problem is, she’s looking so desperately left and right that she doesn’t see who’s standing in front of her.

“She should never have gotten started with that Pole. She and I could have easily produced someone like Fred.

“I hope you don’t play with him. What a useless lug! He stands in front of life as if it was a door—he knows you can open it, but not how.

“Have you seen his drawings? He has talented little hands, I’ll give you that, but … who wants to look at dead birds? Who’s interested in the eyes of pigs? Or the wings of dung flies?

“The pictures make it clear how sick he really is. Anni’s right to destroy them. Like I’ve told her, Fred should learn to read. Reading breeds understanding. And understanding leads to more beautiful pictures.”

On his seventh birthday, Segendorf’s youngest parishioner opened the town’s very first encyclopedia. The thicket of words on the page so frightened Fred that he immediately clapped it shut again, preferring to follow his father on his patrol of the sewer tunnels.

“Don’t you at least want to learn your first word?” Anni shouted after them.

“It’s his birthday,” answered Arkadiusz.

“Tomorrow I’ll learn
two
first words!” Fred promised.

Arkadiusz was responsible for the maintenance of the underground tunnels, casting around for leaks, patching fissures, dislodging clots of ash
,
cleaning the outlet valves, exterminating rats, and, when the system flooded, submerging himself for as long as it took to trace the blockage to its source. Who better for the job than ARKADIUSZ, THE (FORMER) FOUR-MINUTE-AND-FORTY-THREE-SECOND MAN? Besides, down there the racket of motor-driven vehicles was pleasantly muffled, the trickling calm relaxed him like a warm bath. Anni told me how he often roamed the tunnels for hours at a stretch, doing the thing he’d always been so good at doing: waiting. For night, when the traffic would die down. For some message from his family, to whom after all this time and with Anni’s help, he’d finally been able to write again—since Segendorf was now, thanks to the widening network of roads, within reach of the German Reichspost. For Fred’s next drawing—brilliantly detailed sketches, in his opinion, which, despite their unusual subjects, filled him with pride, and at least one of which he always carried on his person. For a burst of inspiration that would reveal to him exactly which ingredient his homemade and less than entirely appetizing pierogi were lacking. For an end to the hateful diatribes that spewed from the Volksempfänger radio set, which Pig Farmer Markus liked to blare from his open window. For Anni’s dancing. For Anni’s song. For Anni’s nod.

“Mama says you used to be a diver,” said Fred in a rather reedy voice, having stuffed his nose with catkins against the sewer’s stink. “That’s someone who stays underwater for a really long time.”

“I was famous!”

“In oceans, too?”

“Once I dove all the way to the floor of the Baltic. Without any help!”

“Where’s the Baltic?”

“Up north.”

“Will you go diving with me, too?”

“Of course! We’ll go to the bottom of all seven seas!”

Fred smiled. “That’s a lot.”

“But first,” said Arkadiusz, pointing to a metal grate down at the end of the tunnel, all overgrown with scraps of vegetation, and pressing a scrub brush into Fred’s hand, “first we have to make sure that Segendorf stays spick-and-span.”

Arkadiusz waited long enough—or too long. On August 25, 1939, a week before the German invasion of his native land, he stumbled across a collapsed sewer tunnel. Instead of reporting the damage right away, he investigated it on his own. Possibly because his eye had been caught by a glitter among the stones. I imagine Arkadiusz climbing over the rubble, pushing clumps of dirt aside with both hands, picking up an unnaturally heavy stone, spitting on it, and wiping the filth away with his shirt—though he knew it would earn him a disapproving shake of the head from his wife. He smiled, thrilled, while a drop of water burst unnoticed on his shoulder. Arkadiusz was barely able to believe that now, without even looking, he’d managed to find it.

“Waiting always pays off!” he informed the sewer pipe, kissing the gold and laughing.

By the time he heard the rushing, it was already too late.

Days passed before they managed to retrieve his body, since only a handful of people took part in the search. These were tough times in which to mobilize help for a Pole. Via Markus’s radio the news had reached Segendorf, delivered by an audibly outraged gentleman: “TONIGHT FOR THE FIRST TIME, REGULAR TROOPS FROM POLAND FIRED ON OUR TERRITORY. WE HAVE BEEN RETURNING FIRE SINCE FIVE FORTY-FIVE A.M. AND FROM NOW ON EVERY BOMB WILL BE ANSWERED WITH A BOMB.”

I was the one who discovered Arkadiusz. At first I’d bristled at the idea of lifting so much as a finger for my brother-in-law’s sake, but of course I couldn’t have refused my sister anything. Without actually putting any effort into the subterranean search, I found him wrapped around an outflow pipe, sallow and bloated. But his face! I’d had plenty of experience with corpses, among them a whole crowd of indolently scowling floaters—but Arkadiusz’s face was in a league of its own. Even in death, he seemed outrageously lovable.

I weighted Arkadiusz’s body down with stones, and sank him in the Moorsee, according to Anni’s wishes. Out there where, years before, a girl from Segendorf had first met a shape-shifter.

The same evening, I went to visit my sister in her room. She sat on her bed, looking weary, too weary even to shake her head, and was surrounded by her Most Beloved Possessions, all that she’d rescued from the ruins of our parents’ house … the spine of the cookbook … a stove tile broken in five pieces … arrowheads … a clutch of hairpins all melted together
…

“How are you doing?” I asked in a whisper.

“I don’t know,” she said.

I came closer. “I’m sorry.” I sat down beside her on the bed and tentatively slipped an arm around her.

Anni snuggled up against me.

“Back when I went away, I thought that I’d find someone out there, someone who’d love me, and whom I could love. But my true love, I’ve realized, my true love lives right here.”

“You’re going to marry Mina?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“But you should! She’s already waited so long! When two people love each other, they should be together!”

“That’s what I think, too.”

“Then don’t wait any longer! You never know how much time you have left! Someday everyone you love will die.”

“Not everyone.”

“I’m an orphan. And a widow.”

“You’re a sister.”

“That’s different.”

“Remember how we used to play who-can-fill-the-cup-with-spit-first?”

“Terrible.”

“You usually won!”

“That was the past,” she said. Leaping up, she hurled the Most Beloved Possessions into a box, and handed it to me. “Here. Do what you want with them.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ve kept them too long. They’re burned. It’s over. Go on, get rid of them.”

That night I saw how patiently the bog swallowed the box of Most Beloved Possessions, and hoped that with this, the story of Jasfe and Josfer was finally at an end.

Afterward, I sat down on Wolf Hill by the tree’s serpentine root, and read
I love you.
From now on, Arkadiusz would no longer stand between me and my sister.

From a pouch I pulled the gold I’d found on Arkadiusz. He must have stuffed it into his pocket just seconds before the surge of water had swept him away. I’d hold on to it for the time being; who knew what good it might do someday.

Then I saw Fred hurrying up the hill toward me, and tucked it away. Though he wasn’t yet nine, my nephew’s legs, thin as matchsticks, were known as the longest in all of Segendorf, and patches of downy beard were already sprouting on his cheeks. “Mama says she can’t be a mama now!”

“And why are you telling me that?”

“I’m telling you because Mama says
you
can be my papa a little bit now.”

“Me? No, Fred. Nonono. Only your papa can be your papa.”

Fred shook first his right, then his left leg, looked up at the sky, cleared his throat. “Mama says you can be my papa a little bit now.”

“You already mentioned that.”

“What?”

“You said that already.”

“I know.”

“So you can go now.”

“I can draw a picture of you!”

“I don’t want any of your pictures. Go play with some kids, any kids!”

“Any kids are sleeping now.”

“Then why don’t you go to sleep, too?”

“I can’t sleep.”

“And why not?”

“Because my papa always sings a song so I can sleep. It has really funny words. Do you know that song?”

“No.”

“I was in the pipes today,” said Fred. “I looked for my papa. Mama says my papa is always traveling through the pipes. Sometimes he’s in America, and sometimes he’s in Poland, and sometimes he’s here, too.” He scraped at the ground with his feet, crossed his arms, stretched them out again, and sniffled. “Mama says you can be my papa a little bit, while my papa is traveling.”

“Fred.”

“Are you my papa a little bit now?”

“Listen.”

“You
have
to be my papa a little bit now!”

“Listen, Fred, listen carefully: I’ll never be your papa. Not today, not tomorrow. Never. Because I’m already a father. I have a son, a healthy son, who I like spending time with. His name’s Ludwig. You aren’t my son, and that’s why I’ll never be your father. I’m not going into the stinking sewers with you and I’m not singing for you and I’m definitely not going to be your papa. And thank God for that. Because I could never be anything for someone like you. You’re nothing to me. You’re nothing.”

A few minutes later my bad conscience sent me after Fred, who’d leapt up and run away. I told myself that I could at least
try
to be his papa a little bit. In the end, that would please Anni. And maybe then I’d be Fred’s papa a little bit in her eyes, too.

I found Fred at the bus stop; he was crying. Before I could make my presence felt, Markus sat down beside him, and since I’d never had much sympathy for the pig farmer, I hid myself behind the maypole, where they wouldn’t be able to see me.

“The next bus doesn’t come for three days,” said Markus to Fred.

“I’m not waiting for the bus,” said Fred.

“For what, then?”

“For my papa.”

“The Polack?” Markus passed Fred a handkerchief. “That could take a while.”

Fred blew his nose. “I’m nothing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Julius says I’m nothing.”

“Ha. Julius Habom isn’t so much himself.” With a casual gesture that betrayed how often he did it, he flipped open a makeup compact and checked to make sure his toupee was perfectly seated on his scalp. Since the unfortunate encounter with Anni many years back, he’d used it to hide his bald patch.

Markus held the mirror up in front of Fred. “Who do you see there?”

“Frederick Arkadiusz Driajes.”

“And is that nothing?”

“Yes?”

“The correct answer is: You can never be nothing. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be there at all!”

“That’s right.”

Markus pointed to Fred’s reflection. “Do you know what I see?”

“Frederick Arkadiusz Driajes?”

“To tell you the truth: no, not just that. I see a boy who could be something great someday, I see
potential.”

“You use a lot of words that nobody knows.”

“I read plenty of books.”

“As many as Julius Habom?”

“More, much more.” Markus tapped his finger on Fred’s reflection. “What color eyes do you have?”

“Green!”

“And what does green stand for? It’s the color of hope, of nature—green stands for growth. Green grows!”

“I’m growing a lot, too!”

“Precisely! Most people never grow. They simply settle for their lives, and when they die, it’s as if they’d never been. But the two of us, we’re different. We grow, we change. Before, I was just the son of a pig farmer. But now, look!” Markus opened his coat and showed Fred a pistol. “My best friend. A Walther P38.” He slipped it from the holster. “Want to feel?”