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 (138 page)

She didn’t notice Helene who was watching her from across the room, her chest constricted by apprehension at the eager way this woman leaned toward Robert, whose awkwardness had been lifted from him as if in one remarkable act of grace. The woman’s features were pronounced—just on the pretty side of being too bony with that narrow nose and flat cheeks—Helene thought, and she wanted her to see Robert the way he was, a shy man, less comfortable with people than with the animals he treated, not this vibrant stranger at the piano who might inspire her to claim him and discard him once he revealed himself to her. A woman like that would not appreciate Robert’s ease with animals. He would not fit into her world.

Helene knew only too well what it felt like not to fit in: although she’d spent nearly half her life in her new country—more familiar to her now than Germany—she didn’t belong, just as she didn’t belong any longer into the country where she had grown up, the country that America had been at war with. Arching her neck, she moved two fingers between her skin and the emerald necklace that she rarely wore. Because it was tight. Because the clasp was complicated. Because of the rage she had felt that first time Stefan had laid it around her neck.

But tonight he had coaxed her into wearing it to Nate’s party. “To honor him for his birthday,” he’d said.

“I’ll wear it for our sons,” she’d said. “For returning to us. Without lasting injuries.”

It pleased her, that proud tilt to Stefan’s chin as he listened to their son, who was mesmerizing everyone with his music. What didn’t please her was the attention of the woman from Boston, and she was glad when Nate’s son stepped next to the woman and laid his hands on her bare shoulder.

“Yvonne—” he started.

But she raised one finger to silence him.

Nate’s son studied Robert who attacked the keyboard like a lumberjack even if he wrested flawless tones from it, whose left foot veered off like the gaze of a cross-eyed child from time to time until he retrieved it.

Easing her shoulder from beneath her fiancé’s light grasp, Yvonne kept herself turned toward the pianist, who made her forget the lawyer, the silk gown she planned to design for herself, even the way she looked now, this moment, an awareness that had been with her ever since she was a small girl and others had stared at her, an awareness that provided her with a constant summary of her impact on those around her. And yet, fearing it too, being on display. But he pulled her back, the pianist, gave her shelter in his music. And as he merged with the keyboard in a mating ceremony that, ultimately, would be impossible, she felt dizzied by a warmth that spread low in her belly. Drawn to this grace that flourished from his ugliness, she smiled at the image of him bending over her with that same intensity.

And so she pursued him.

Over the next two months, she battled his shyness and her disgust at watching him eat enormous portions of food and hearing him hum to himself as he chewed. She felt a certain tenderness at his confusion why a woman as beautiful as she would be drawn to him. Three weeks after meeting him, she announced that she loved him, and she was moved by his gratitude but even more so by her own kindness because it proved to her that she was not frivolous—something that Ira Bloom and other men had accused her of. A frivolous woman would never be able to love a man whose body revolted her. No, her love proved to her that she was capable of enormous depth and compassion.

But Robert could not believe it fully—this proclamation of her love—and suspected that what she loved was only the image of him at the piano. And maybe that was enough, he reasoned with himself. Maybe it was even better. Because that was the part of himself he, too, liked best.

“You are extraordinarily gifted,” she told him when he visited her in Boston. “You could be a concert pianist if you chose.”

“I’m a veterinarian,” he reminded her.

Being with Robert made her want to match the passion he had for his music. He made her feel chosen and interesting in the same way she used to feel about herself when she was twelve and still believed she could know everything in the world, believed it enough to try and stay up all night reading novels and books about philosophers, feeling chosen whenever she managed to keep from sleeping.

He thought of her all the time: she was like quicksilver where his mother was serious and deliberate; she was playful and charming; she was the most exquisite woman he had ever met, the kind of woman he would have never dared approach. And yet she wanted him. Had ended her long engagement to Nate’s son to be with him.

“Somehow I never really believed I would marry Ira,” she’d told him. “It was the kind of engagement that goes on forever because … I guess there’s no next step. And so we stayed engaged. Until I met you.”

And yet it mystified Robert that she would choose him over the tall lawyer. For her he would change, he decided. Become that man at the piano even when he was away from his music. In bed he wanted her to look at him with that desire. But she was disappointed by the consideration he brought to their lovemaking—she yearned for the abandon with which he hurled himself at his music.

Since she liked dancing, he didn’t object when she tried to teach him some basic steps, and she made sure to praise him if he remembered a sequence. “With all you know about music,” she told him one Sunday evening when they practiced alone in her apartment, “you’ll be a wonderful dancer before you know it.”

She got him to laugh at mistakes, and they’d try again until he had the steps right. It amazed him how confident she made him feel
about his dancing. Sometimes her hands would get cold and turn from pale to blue to purple, outlining her knuckles and the bones of her wrist. Embarrassed, she’d hide them in her pockets or tuck them into her crossed arms. They stirred him, those hands, stirred him in a profound way and made him protective of her one vulnerability.

Regardless how lightly he danced with her in her living room, he felt clumsy the Saturday they stepped on the dance floor in the Weirs Beach pavilion, which was famous because some of the great bands had played here. But not that night. And he was glad for that since he felt heavy and slow.

In the morning, though, he felt faster than she, lighter, when he took her swimming in Lake Winnipesaukee after picking her up from Greta’s apartment where she had stayed the night.

“Wait for me,” she shouted after him, laughing and splashing as soon as she reached him.

When they walked into the
Wasserburg
afterwards, sun followed them through the stained-glass moons above the French doors and turned the lobby golden-red. Yvonne stopped. Touched the intricate inlay on the desk. “How lucky you are to be living here.”

“Would you?”

“Would I what?”

“Live here. You could. I mean—you could marry me and then live here. With me.”

She laughed. “Of course it would be with you.”

“I shouldn’t have asked. I’m sorry. You’ve only known me five weeks and—”

“Yes.”

He stared at her. “Yes that I shouldn’t have asked? Or yes that you will… I mean, marry me?”

“Which one would you prefer?”

“In my bravest moment?”

“Only in your bravest moment.”

“That you said yes to marrying me.”

“Does a man have to be brave to marry me?”

“Brave only in believing you could say yes.”

“Yes.”

“My dear,” he said and instantly felt the ancient fear he’d known as a boy—
babies can kill mothers… babies all powerful, all frail
—when he’d stood by the grave of the dead mothers. “But you have to promise—”

“Promise what?”

“No children. That you won’t have children.”

“I don’t want stretch marks.”

“Promise then.”

“That’s easy enough.” She took his face between her cold hands. “Oh, Robert. Isn’t this the moment when you’re supposed to kiss me?”

When Nate Bloom heard that Robert was about to marry his son’s fiancée two months after meeting her at his birthday party, he told Stefan, “You people want everything that isn’t yours.” It was a comment that needed no explanation, a comment that cut through years of their friendship and their silence regarding Jews and Germany.
You people.
And he did not come to Robert’s wedding, though Stefan tried to act around him as though that comment had never been made.
You people.

Pearl, however, arrived with Stanley Poggs and two hand-cut crystal vases. “Nate won’t stay angry,” she told Helene when the two women escaped to the roof during the last hour of the wedding reception that Pearl had helped to set up in the courtyard, arranging for delicacies and cake and even champagne. “Besides, he has always liked your Robert. He even knows him better than he knows his son. It’s just now—with everything that’s in the paper about the Jews in Germany—I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be saying any of this.”

“Go on,” Helene said. “Really.”

“His son is family.”

Helene nodded, wishing she could apologize to Pearl for Germany, and yet afraid that she didn’t have the right, that it would be arrogant to apologize for the actions of others … for their decisions. What if she was only doing it to feel better about herself? To Jews who’d survived, an apology from her certainly would not make a difference. “Even the ones who got away—” She stopped.

“What is it?”

“I often think of how they had to leave behind everything that belonged to them. Start all over again. Noah Creed, he told me about a Jewish doctor who lives on his block. She had her husband and daughter taken from her, and she’s been in America over a year. You know what she does? Works at a grocery store because she isn’t allowed to practice medicine until she’s passed all kinds of medical and language exams. When I think how long it took me to get used to the language … And it’s not that I’m comparing what happened to me.”

“I know you’re not.”

“She didn’t choose to leave Germany. She didn’t have a house waiting for her. She lost her family and her work. I mean, her work is all tied in with language. You can be real good at your work, an expert, and then you’re taken out of your language and you lose your work too.”

“Hey … this is Robert’s wedding. A day to celebrate.”

“I’m not so sure.” Helene adjusted the lace collar of her mauve dress. “I wish they had waited…. Yvonne doesn’t know what he’s like.”

“They obviously adore each other.”

“What I don’t understand is why it had to be right away.”

“And to consider—” Pearl interrupted herself, laughing.

“Consider what?”

“This conversation between two women who decided within hours to get married.”

“I knew Stefan for many years.”

“Knowing and marrying are two separate things, Sweetie, unless you mean knowing in a biblical way.”

“Unfortunately, it was entirely chaste.”

“Well, I could count the time between meeting and marrying Nate in minutes.”

“Stefan calls Yvonne a thin wire.”

“And what does that mean?”

“The first time I heard him use that expression was about my brother’s wife, Gertrud. A certain frailty. Being stretched so tight you’ll snap.”

“But Yvonne is not weak. She’s a powerful woman, just not in the same way you are. Your power comes from doing for yourself. Hers from letting others do for her.” Pearl’s dainty feet rested on the low edge of the roof as she sipped the wine she’d brought along. “Yvonne reminds me of my Aunt Amy who always had suitors though she was in a wheelchair. Even as an old woman, Aunt Amy had suitors. They competed with each other, couldn’t do enough for her because she made them feel so helpful… so appreciated.”

“I never thought of that as powerful.”

“Oh, but it is. I bet my Aunt Amy got more often what she wanted than you do. She once told me she would have been a fool to marry, to limit herself to one of them.”

“And where do you fit in with your power?”

“Oh, probably somewhere in between. I can do for myself, but sometimes I choose to appreciate others and let them do for me.” Pearl looked out over the town that had grown in the three decades she’d lived here, spreading into the hills and along the shore of the lake, thickening in a half-belt around the
Wasserburg
as if drawn to a mysterious source. Below her, on the lawn that ran from the house to the sand, three children were playing with a red ball. A few of the guests had brought swimsuits and were in the lake or on the dock. “A thin wire …,” Pearl mused. “Leave it to Stefan to have an expression for that. Still, I have never seen our Robert this much in love. And don’t forget that they’re both nearly thirty. Old enough to make those decisions.”