Parallel Stories: A Novel (151 page)

A simple slip might mean serious injury.

Hans straightened up a little. To see the figure better, though he knew he should flee. He did not want simply to throw away his stick. To run, to flee as inconspicuously as possible, careful not to step on wobbly rocks so as not to fall into the frothing, ice-cold water. He cast a last look at the strange phenomenon he’d neither fished out nor managed to identify. With a few well-directed jumps he was off and away, looking back at the dark mountainside where the rustling in the bushes grew louder, which was encouraging. He clambered up the steep riverbank and felt a childlike joy at having escaped, then waded into the high grass, which benevolently swallowed him and covered him up. He went on listening, and panting, while he retrieved his buttoned shoes and thick knee socks. They had become damp with dew, and within moments he too felt damp as he lay in the grass. The approaching girl’s arms and legs and the red flashing of her skirt disappeared behind a group of rocks. On that stretch, the serpentine path lessened the steepness of the slope. When she clears it, the landscape will come upon her as if she were at a comfortable lookout point. Before that happened, he had time to stuff the socks into the shoes and, bending low, start off. Back to the protection of the railway viaduct’s enormous central pier.

He had to step on stones. Barefoot, he quickly picked his way over the yellowish, body-colored stones.

Every step made some noise and was painful.

His plan was to use the cover of the pier to back into the woods. From there he could stroll along the riverbank without any danger of being discovered, over the rather prickly ground covered with pine needles under the hundred-year-old trees, so that at a more distant spot he could put on his socks and shoes.

He looked back once more to see who this person was, what she might want. He did not know what he feared discovering or what kept him there despite his fear.

She was a girl somewhat older than he; at the sight of her Hans grew a little uncertain. Her dark hair was in braids with bows at the end made of the same red material as her skirt. She was carrying a small basket, as if she were collecting berries or mushrooms.

For that, she was too late in the valley.

Where the serpentine section of the trail ended, the most dangerous stretch began.

The trail continued downward, deepened by water-worn gullies and blocked with fallen stones. She could not help sliding, or grasping at shrubs, tendrils, roots, or dried-out stalks that would not break or be pulled off when she tugged at them; she was becoming flustered. The red-bowed braids now fell forward, now snapped back, her breasts quivered under her blouse, her little basket slipped up to her shoulder and almost slid off her wrist; everything was crackling and snapping. Which the valley and the viaduct echoed many times over. She was rushing headlong down the trail; her skirt kept flying up. Hans saw her long brown thighs and pink panties, and then the same series of pictures again.

He was afraid she might have to cover this steepest stretch of the trail sliding on her bare bottom.

Such a stupid girl.

Who doesn’t know how to dig in with her heels and the outer edge of her shoes.

How can a girl be so dumb.

She was not in the least scared; the speed and danger made her rather determined.

Hans was whimpering and cheering her on. He clung to the base of the pier, craning his neck to see her better. As if for the first time in his life he was seeing a feminine being, fully exposed and with nothing held back, struggle with circumstances and the gravity of her body.

She thrilled him, though he could not imagine what she was doing here.

He would catch her.

If they sent someone with an urgent message from Annaberg, that person would come on a bicycle. When relatives came on foot from Wiesa or Wiesenbad to look for some staff member, they came from the opposite direction, from the Bismarck tower.

He will surprise her.

This is just crazy, that someone should be such a clumsy bungler.

But she reached the bottom without mishap, slamming against an uprooted tree. She grasped it, supported herself on it, and rested a little, panting and looking at the stream, which she still had to cross, and adjusted her skirt and blouse. Also her breasts, with a single movement under her blouse, which stunned Hans for a moment as he clung more tightly to the warmth of the pier.

He was incredulous; this could not be happening.

It was obvious that she’d have to take off her shoes to get across the shallows, which was not without dangers. For a second Hans imagined that in fact she was coming to see him. That she wanted to visit him in great secrecy. But this made no sense.

As if she had been exchanged for someone else during the lapsed time, she had changed completely. The change, for which Hans was unprepared, aroused unpleasant feelings. How could he have known that such a change was possible in the world. What he saw was that Ingke Einbock had grown taller and heavier. She had grown out of her little girlhood, while Hans, despite his summer adventure, remained a little boy, which made him ashamed. The girl had the upper hand now; that was his definite impression.

Which tortures every boy.

Not wanting to feel what he was feeling.

Not to think of what he perpetually thought about.

She had always seemed above him somehow, and this had bound them together as their deepest shared secret.

He watched eagerly to see what she was doing and how.

Perhaps readying himself to help her if the need arose. If she slipped on the stones, which was a definite possibility. Tripping and plopping into the water with her stupid panties; and if she did, she’d never be able to get up again. Dumb Ingke Einbock, but why did she come here. This sort of thing had happened to him when they tested their adroitness and played with this danger. There was an obvious basic rule for crossing the shallows that it was inadvisable to ignore. The current there was very strong, and slippery colorless algae covered the underwater stones. The cold of the clear, rushing water penetrated him to the bone. It felt as if a blade wanted to slice off his feet. Anyone who dared to put two feet down on an algae-covered stone was a lost cause.

His breath might stop, but he was already in the water and his limbs were bruised on the stones. Without anything to hold on to he might slip, because underwater everything was slipping along with him. As if the mouth of hell had sucked him in and he was about to slide down its gullet. Somebody, someone standing on a dry rock, would reach out and help him, that too had happened, or the current quickly pulled him away. He would still feel how pleasantly warm it was to live inside his flesh, but the cold of the water was already hurting. And to prevent the end, he would have to stay on a dry rock with at least one foot, and cling to it.

But if he had already fallen in, there was no other way to escape except to give in to the insane current, to entrust his helpless body to the elemental force of the water.

Which nobody really likes to do.

He had to be careful not to wind up in the whirlpools at the waterfall or knock against the treacherous boulders. But the force of the current made this almost impossible to avoid. The frigid water had already numbed him, deprived him of his senses. He could not swim more than a few strokes. And it didn’t make any sense to try. At best, he could steer himself, have some control over his direction, to keep the whirlpools from taking him under the waterfall, because whoever was caught there would not be disgorged without serious injuries. And when past this danger, where an increased volume of water widened and deepened the streambed, it was possible to wriggle his way to shore. He could check the blue spots and bruises on his body; hours later, his teeth were still chattering, his body still trembling and shivering.

And the other boys were laughing inside their warm bodies.

And there was no point in answering them, because no sound would come from his mouth and his teeth were chattering.

Ingke was obviously familiar with the rules; she adroitly avoided the underwater boulders. Only when she reached the middle of the stream did one of them wobble under her. This was the moment when Kienast was summoned from the tree nursery, they were about to put the tools away, he should leave everything and report to Schultze’s office.

Kienast was under the boys’ protection, but no power could cross Schultze’s wishes.

There was but a short hour until dinnertime.

And Ingke Einbock had come from Annaberg to see him; she did want to visit him.

She laughed but did not answer questions.

She took a small letter out of her blouse—a calling card in an envelope. And as Hans opened the envelope, which had not been glued shut, he right away recognized his father’s handwriting. His father did not write as Germans did.

The important thing, Ingke Einbock said, is to keep your mouth shut.

We’ll tear it into tiny pieces.

There were altogether three sentences on the card. A peculiar dread seized Hans whenever he had to read his father’s letters written in Hungarian. And when he wrote in German, it was barely understandable because he made so many grammatical mistakes. Hans knew Hungarian, but since he had first learned to read and write in the Slovak school in Fánt, the visual image of Hungarian words remained alien to him. And how glad he had been to have managed to forget his father for good, along with dread of his language.

He should prepare: his father was going to take him away from here.

As soon as he read this first sentence, he was filled with completely unprecedented gratitude and joy—that his father loved him after all, would take him to himself—and at the same time he was also filled with an unspeakable, crushing pain. Because then he’d have to leave Hendrik forever, yes, he knew it would be forever, and would have to leave Kienast at the mercy of the other boys; and leaving would be the most dastardly betrayal possible. He must keep this to himself; he cannot tell them about it.

The first sentence made it clear that the secret Communist organization had made its initial move and, judging by the circumstances, Ingke Einbock’s mother was part of it.

He had not yet read the second sentence when he wavered. It wouldn’t be so painful to give up Ingke Einbock. He wanted to deny having read the first sentence. To reject this little note, to say no. For him, Kienast and Franke were more important than his father, who all his life had done nothing but leave him.

He’d left him.

It will be an escape, wrote his father in the next sentence. He will be notified in advance of the time.

It was good to forget about his father for another reason, which was that Hans was afraid he had inherited his father’s blood. No one has said so, but that seemed to be the examiners’ assumption, based on tests and observation, which by law made sterilization necessary.

Your father, it said at the bottom of the little card.

He wanted to read it again, look at it some more, and he felt the girl’s eyes on him. He knew he was being weak, that he could not abandon them. Yet those last two words were very strong; he also could not say no. So as not to weaken in front of the girl—he had never felt such weakness before, he had never fainted—he sought the warmth of the stone pier at his back.

This stone, gneiss, behaves peculiarly in every life situation. Lukewarm a moment ago from the rays of the sun, it was now ice-cold. Or perhaps he just felt it like that. Gneiss can easily be split, because of its foliation, though one could see no trace of any cracks on the stones in the streambed. Maybe this is the last time he will see these stones in the stream. Because of the constant friction, they had lost their hard edges and lay on one another like stuffed pillows. They deceived the observer with their friendly, fleshlike colors and cushiony forms. Anyone who bumped into gneiss or wished to go at it with a chisel could testify that it was as hard as granite. To which, in its mineral composition, by the way, it is identical.

The area’s characteristic nobiliary nests were all built of this stone, the mountaintop castles of Freiberg, Wolkenstein, Schwarzenberg, Schlettau, Frauenstein, and Hartenstein—fortresses and citadels raised at the end of the Middle Ages to protect the roads along which the silver, precious stones, and valuable industrial ores mined here were transported. He looked at what he had to leave behind, and everything seemed different. They would take him to Moscow. The even older bulwarked fortress churches, sacrificial chapels, bridges, viaducts, and—grandest and most impressive of all—the church of St. Anne in Annaberg had also been built of this stone. Every window of the Wolkensteins’ house gave on its soaring apse with its arched windows. The fleshlike color of the stone filled the interior spaces in every season and in every part of each day. A veritable cathedral that, with its rustic exterior of this cut stone and its interior suffused with light, was considered an exceptional Gothic masterpiece.

And while the two children squatting at the base of the viaduct’s central pier let go the tiny shreds of the torn-up letter, piece by piece, Kienast had to strip naked and lie down on the examination table, which in that first second felt frightfully cold.

This was not the first time it happened to him—something the boys feared so much that even later they wouldn’t talk about it, not even among themselves.

That Hans and Hendrik wanted to find Schultze’s secret notes was not by chance. They knew what they were looking for and which data they wanted to destroy at all cost.

It was a brand-new method and therefore they could not have known what it was, in fact, or what occurred during the specific examination, obviously focused on specific results. In order to make plaster casts of certain sensitive parts of their bodies, Schultze had to put them in a state of hibernation. The casts, in strictly sealed little boxes, were sent by registered mail to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics on Ihne Street, in Berlin. These samples came under the charge not of Baroness Thum but, in a separate unit of the great collection, of Baron Schuer. He prepared the plan for the examination together with directors of other institutes. The Psychological Institute’s director was of the opinion that any other, more legal form of sample-taking would have an unpredictable effect on the pupils’ mental development that might seriously jeopardize the examination itself.