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 (28 page)

Trudi wondered where the grave with the hand was. Somewhere in the Catholic section of the cemetery, so she’d heard from several people, was the grave of a woman who’d hit her parents when she was a girl. As punishment and as a warning to other children—“Never ever raise your hand toward your parents,”—her hand had grown from her grave seventy years later when she’d died. Though Trudi had never found the grave, she was sure it was there, the hand curled between the shrubs like a blossom, ready to spread into a claw that would seize you if you came close.

A trick wind lifted the hem of Frau Doktor Rosen’s skirt and shifted through the bouquets and wreaths so that—for an instant—they seemed to be sliding toward the hole. Eva Rosen and her two older brothers stood next to their mother, but Herr Rosen hadn’t come with them. He was from a rich old family and seldom left his house. On days when the sun was out—even in winter—Trudi would see him resting on the canvas lounge chair on his veranda, a soft man with receding hair and pink skin, his body covered with a plaid blanket.
Some said he was quite ill; others insisted there was nothing wrong with him; yet, they all speculated why Frau Doktor Rosen wasn’t able to cure her husband.

As the pastor sprinkled holy water into the grave, Trudi hooked one finger into the rubber band beneath her chin and let it snap, again and again, until all she felt was that sting.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” the taxidermist said and enveloped Trudi’s hand with his warm fingers.

At the house, as if to make up for Leo Montag’s silence, Frau Blau thanked the judge for coming. “We are honored,” she said. It was her way of acknowledging that the judge was of a better class than most of the guests. She cut pieces of
Streuselkuchen
for Frau Doktor Rosen and her children, but she reminded Trudi, “Wash your hands before you eat.” When she spit on her ironed handkerchief to clean Trudi’s face, the girl squirmed away.

The tables were covered with an even larger display of delicacies than on the day of her brother’s funeral, and Trudi took whatever she wanted: three stalks of juicy white asparagus, blood sausage, plum cake, a
Brötchen
, tomato salad, and two kinds of herring salad—one pink because of added beets. New amber fly strips hung curled above the tables, but already quite a few flies stuck to them. Trudi counted eleven. Two were still twirling their legs. At her brother’s funeral feast, it had been too cold for flies.

All the guests wanted to talk to her or stroke her hair, and she felt more important than she ever had before. She even received a present—a stuffed white lamb made of real fur—from Alexander Sturm, who owned a toy factory. He had been only fourteen when his father had died as a soldier, and he’d left the
Gymnasium
to run his father’s business for himself and his older sister.

Emil Hesping moved through the rooms as if reclaiming lost rights and, like a host, poured Mosel wine for everyone from green bottles he’d brought in a wooden case on the back of his motorcycle.

The taxidermist, Herr Heidenreich, helped Herr Hansen carry two
Schwarzwälder Kirschtorten
from his bakery. Propping his cigar against a plate, the taxidermist cut the first wedge of
Torte
for Trudi. Squatting on his heels, he handed her the plate. His eyes were brown and kind. “You’re lucky to have such pretty hair, Trudi,” he said.

“Such pretty hair,” the baker agreed and stroked Trudi’s head with
the hand that had two fingers missing from the war.

Although Trudi felt wicked for liking all that attention, she couldn’t stop herself from enjoying it. There was an excitement about all this, something new, unknown. And yet, whenever she recalled that closed coffin, she’d feel something cold rush throughout her body. As long as the coffin had been open, she’d been certain her mother was not the woman inside, but once the lid had been shut, it had been harder to stay convinced.

She walked past Herr Immers, but the butcher didn’t even see her because he and Herr Braunmeier were busy complaining to each other about something called the Versailles
Friedensvertrag
—a
Schandvertrag
, they called it, a disgrace. Then they went on to protest about refugees who took food out of the mouths of decent people, like the Baum family, who had fled from Schlesien and opened a bicycle shop in Burgdorf.

“Those refugees have no manners, no values.” Herr Braunmeier lit his cigarette. Though he was the wealthiest farmer in town, he stole words when he came into the pay-library. He’d buy his tobacco and linger among the back shelves, where the American Westerns were stacked, his eyes racing down the pages of recent arrivals, his haggard body turned toward the exit as if prepared for flight, his shoulder blades jutting out like clipped wings.

“They believe they can just move here and we’ll start buying those bicycles like porkchops,” Herr Immers said.

Since the town had its own complicated class system—fixed boundaries based on wealth, education, family history, and other intricate considerations—the people united against newcomers. Yet, their prejudices were often tested by their curiosity, and many of them had watched outside the shop’s window as the burly Herr Baum arranged his display of four bicycles. Although the bikes already gleamed, he kept polishing them with an oily rag. Beyond the window, in the recesses of the store, stood his wife, frail and silent. On each hip she supported a child. “Twins,” someone in the crowd mentioned, though the boy was larger than the girl. Both had runny noses and were almost Trudi’s age, far too heavy to still be carried.

Trudi sauntered into the hallway where the coat tree was fat with black summer coats and jackets. She climbed beneath them, but as her fingers parted the layers of fabric, they came up against something that was far more solid—a sleeve that had an arm inside.

“What’s that?” A man’s voice.

A woman’s hushed laugh and rose perfume.

Trudi came out behind the coat tree, where the baker’s wife and Herr Buttgereit were kissing. They pulled apart so quickly that she felt an exhilarating sense of power because she was sure she’d seen something that they didn’t want anyone to know.

Herr Buttgereit blinked at her. “You shouldn’t sneak around like that, little girl.”

“Don’t get her all upset now,” Frau Hansen said. “We were looking for my glasses, Trudi. Did you see my glasses?”

Trudi shook her head and backed away from them. By the kitchen door she stopped. The women were whispering about her mother: they agreed with one another that there had always been a little too much of everything about Gertrud Montag—not just that she laughed and cried too easily, but also that generosity. Frau Simon used the word “poise” for Trudi’s mother. An exuberant woman with beautiful ankles, Frau Simon had red hair that she piled into restless curls on top of her head. If anyone knew about poise, it was Frau Simon—after all, she talked about it constantly and made the most elegant hats in the region. Even women from Oberkassel and Krefeld came to her shop, which was on the first floor of the apartment house on Barbarossa Strasse that she’d bought with her own profits. People gossiped about her because she was divorced and liked to argue like a man, but they agreed that she had a natural eye for fashion and that—even though everyone knew Jews could talk you into buying anything—she refused to sell you a hat if it didn’t look right on you.

Trudi could tell that the women treated Frau Simon differently: they envied her outspokenness; they tried to get her to flatter them; but they kept her outside their circle. They were like that with Frau Doktor Rosen too, bringing her their respect and illnesses that the nuns could not cure in the Theresienheim, but not their friendship.

“Gertrud Montag always had poise,” Frau Simon said.

Frau Buttgereit wondered aloud why, then, Gertrud had agreed to marry Leo Montag. Varicose veins bulged through her support stockings, and her belly was so big that she stood cradling it with her linked hands.

“It’s his eyes.” Frau Blau sighed and took a long drag from her cigarette. “Leo Montag looks at you with those exquisite eyes of his, and you follow him anywhere.”

Frau Simon laughed. “At your age?”

“Any age.”

“Leo is a saint for taking care of Gertrud those last five years,” Frau Weiler declared. “A saint, and don’t—”

“I know a joke about a saint,” Trudi announced.

The women’s faces spun toward her.

“A joke.” Frau Weiler looked flustered. “This is not a proper occasion for telling jokes.” Her black scarf was still knotted around her frizzy hair that was parted in the center. No one in town could remember having seen all of her head uncovered because she always wore scarves that exposed only the front of her hair.

“I’d like to hear the joke,
Kindchen.”
Frau Abramowitz knelt next to Trudi and kissed her forehead. The collar of her black jacket was made of foxes—little claws and heads that came together in two pointed fox snouts between her breasts.

Trudi threw both arms around her neck and squeezed hard. The fox fur tickled her chin. She wished she could call Frau Abramowitz by her first name—Ilse, which was so much prettier than Abramowitz—but children had to call grown-ups by their last names and address them with
Sie
—the formal you. Only children were called by their first names and addressed with
Du
—the familiar you—by everyone. That was one good thing about being a child. Many grown-ups called each other by their last names all their lives, and if they agreed to switch to first names, they first had to link elbows while drinking beer or
Schnaps
to manifest the
Du
.

“Go ahead, Trudi,” Frau Abramowitz said. “You tell us your joke.”

“It’s about St. Petrus.” Trudi tried to remember the right sequence of the joke she’d overheard Emil Hesping tell her father last month when he’d come into the pay-library with the news that he’d been promoted to manage a second gymnasts’ club in Düsseldorf. It was larger than the one in Burgdorf and belonged to the same owner who’d talked with Emil about having him open other clubs as far away as Köln and Hamburg.

“The joke starts with the Virgin Maria,” Trudi said. “She wants to go to earth for three weeks. St. Petrus makes her promise to write every week.… The first week she writes that she saw three churches and two museums. She signs her letter ‘Virgin Maria …’”

Frau Doktor Rosen, who’d just walked into the kitchen, raised one elegant eyebrow. Eva was holding on to her mother’s belt, her dark
eyes watchful. Trudi had seen her many times before—she looked like her mother, with those long wrists and black curls—but she’d never talked with her or stood this close to her. If she could have any wish right now, she’d want to be tall like Eva.

Trudi looked right at Eva. “The second letter,” she told her, “says, ‘Dear St. Petrus, I took a trip on a train and rode on a ferry boat.’ She signs the letter again with ‘Virgin Maria.’ But the third letter—” She paused, hoping she’d get the joke just right so that Eva would laugh as her father and Emil Hesping had laughed. That’s how she’d known it was a good joke, even though she hadn’t understood what was so funny.

“The third letter says, ‘Dear Petrus, I went to a tavern and danced with a sailor.’ It’s signed ‘Maria.’” She waited for the laughter, but the only sound was an abrupt cough from Frau Weiler. It was quiet in the kitchen. Too quiet. Had she forgotten part of the joke? No—something was wrong. She had done something bad. It was hot in the house, hot and blue with tobacco smoke even though the windows were open.

Frau Immers chased a fly from the fruit compote. “I better check on that potato salad.”

“Let me help you,” Frau Blau offered.

“Herr Hesping—” one of the women said.

They all glanced toward the door, where Emil Hesping stood in a new suit, the kind of new that hasn’t been worn before. The front creases of his black trousers were pressed knife sharp, and his pearl cufflinks shimmered. He looked like a groom at his own wedding—except that everyone knew he was the kind of man who made jokes about others getting married and sinned against the sixth commandment even though his brother was a bishop.

He lifted Trudi up. Though he kept his lips in a smile, she could tell he had cried because his eyes were red. “Let me tell you a joke that’s proper for a little girl to tell. You too, Eva.” He took Eva’s hand. “You see, there’s this teacher who has a dog, Schatzi, and he doesn’t allow her to sleep on the sofa, but every day when he leaves for school, Schatzi jumps on the sofa and sleeps there all day. When the teacher comes home, she’s lying on the floor, but he knows. Guess how?”

Most of the women were busying themselves with lighting fresh cigarettes or pushing pots around on the flat surface of the stove; yet, they kept their movements slow and soundless so as not to miss a word.

“I don’t know how.” Eva Rosen looked at Trudi and made a face by wrinkling her nose. When Trudi grinned and wrinkled her nose too, Eva laughed.

“Ah—but the teacher knows,” Emil Hesping said, “because the sofa is still warm. And so he scolds Schatzi—teachers are very good at scolding, you’ll find that out once you start school. The next day, when he comes home, the sofa is warm again. He spanks the dog, and the following evening, when he checks the sofa, it is not warm. He figures he has finally trained Schatzi. But one day he arrives home just a few minutes earlier than usual, and guess what he sees? There’s Schatzi, standing on the sofa—” He pursed his mouth and made short puffs of breath that tickled Trudi’s chin. “There’s Schatzi, blowing air on the sofa to cool it down.”

A few of the women laughed politely. Trudi thought it was a boring joke. She could tell it bored Emil Hesping too because he winked at her. It was their secret that he liked the Virgin Maria joke much better. But then he winked at Frau Simon too, and something odd happened: Frau Simon’s neck grew longer, and her face turned as red as her hair.

When Eva slipped away, Trudi followed her. They wandered through the rooms where smoke shifted in hazy layers below the ceilings. People stopped talking as the girls came close to them; they stared at Trudi, told her again how brave she was. Her father leaned against the side of the piano, his face still, his eyes empty. Trudi remembered what Frau Blau had said about his eyes—exquisite—but they were ordinary, gray with blue specks, and they didn’t see her, not even when she climbed on the piano stool. When she hit the first piano key, it sounded louder than ever before.