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 (67 page)

Only after he was sitting did Box 241 allow his eyes to roam—quickly though, as if hesitant to intrude on anyone—and then he pulled thick eyeglasses from his pocket and studied the menu with intense concentration as if it could provide him with clues to the woman who had summoned him here. His black hair touched the collar of his suit jacket, and he had a timid mustache.

Trudi was one of two women who sat by themselves—the other tables
were occupied by couples or families—but the man’s eyes kept shifting past her as if she were not there, returning to a heavy, dark-haired woman who was devouring a piece of
Bienenstich
, scooping out the custard filling and spreading it on top of the glazed almond topping. Box 241 ordered tea with lemon, checked his pocket watch, then took off his glasses, hastily, as if he’d only now recalled that he was wearing them. Unfolding a sheet of paper that looked like Trudi’s letter from a distance, he frowned, and looked once more at the woman who was dissecting her cake.

I’m prettier than she, Trudi thought.

I’m much younger.

I don’t eat like a pig.

But the man never even glanced at her, and all at once she was filled with an ancient rage at him and every man who simply dismissed her, a rage that uncoiled within her, fast and savage, making her want to inflict suffering on him—far beyond the humiliation of waiting for a woman who would never arrive. It always came back to feeling different. Always. Knowing there always would be that difference, that it would not get any better. And one way to get back at them was to express the nastiness many of them didn’t dare to think. Though it was there, in their hearts, behind their smiles.

She wanted to get up and walk over to the man’s table and tell him—Tell him what? She couldn’t think of anything vehement enough to say to him. Besides, it wouldn’t crush him if it came from her. She dug in her handbag for paper and a pen.
I have seen you
, she wrote, the notepad on her knees,
and I find you too
—She paused, thinking, and read what she’d written.

Box 241 lit a pipe, spilling some tobacco onto the tablecloth. His eyes fastened on every woman who passed the restaurant as if he hoped Angelika would still step up to his table, raise his two carnations to her lovely face, and murmur something like,
“I could feel you waiting for me”
The heroines in the romances would say something like that. The bolder ones might even ask:
“Is this how you imagined me?”

Pitiful, Trudi thought.
Pitiful
, she wrote and finished her note.
I have seen you
, she read,
and I find you too pitiful to consider.
There. It was perfect. She signed it
Angelika
and paid her bill. Her heart a wild rhythm in her throat, she stood up. Her high heels felt wobbly as she neared the man’s table.

“Excuse me,” she said.

Box 241 squinted, his eyes moving from a space above her head to her face as if adjusting themselves to her height, shrinking her. “Yes?” he asked. His mustache was not skimpy as she’d thought but rather full and streaked with bleached hairs. Though his suit wasn’t new, it was of good cloth and well cared for. But his shoes were dusty. “Yes?” he asked again and set his pipe into the ashtray.

She blushed, realizing he’d watched her inspect him. “This woman—” she said, the taste of lipstick on her teeth. “You see, this woman was walking by … there on the sidewalk next to my table.” She pointed to where she’d sat, irritated with herself because she wasn’t nearly as composed as she wanted to be. “And she asked me to—to give this to you.” Before she could change her mind, she thrust the note at him.

“Thank you.” His tanned hand reached for it. “When—”

“Oh … about ten minutes ago.”

Hastily, Box 241 pushed the thick-lensed glasses back onto his nose and unfolded the lined paper. “Why did you wait this long?” He spoke in a rapid singsong, and she couldn’t understand his words right away because they sounded outlandish and light as they floated from his lips and only came together for her after he’d stopped speaking. “Why didn’t you come right over?”

“I’m—I’m somewhat shy.”

For the first time he looked at her fully as though he knew what it was like to be shy, and it occurred to her that he seemed to be a man who was kind by nature. She wanted to retrieve the note, but his eyes fled down the words and then up again. He turned the paper as if hoping for a contradicting message, and then he gave a little cough that ended high in his throat. Carefully, he refolded the note.

The voices of the other people had receded as if a wide space had opened around his table. A cool draft moved up Trudi’s legs, making her shiver. She no longer felt that rage—only deep shame. How could she have been so cruel?

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Her words jolted him as though he’d forgotten she was still there. He worked his lips as if to reply and finally shocked her with a burst of laughter. “You—young lady—you—”

She took a step back.

“—you are very lucky.” Still laughing, he pulled out a chair and motioned for her to sit down.

“I can’t stay.”

“In some countries they kill the messenger.” He stopped laughing and regarded her so gravely that she was afraid he suspected the truth. “Fortunately, I don’t engage in that custom.…” His peculiar singsong had slowed down, making it easier for Trudi to follow him. “What did she tell you, this woman?”

“Just to give the note to you.”

“You know what it says?”

“Oh, no. It’s private.”

“Of course. Please … do sit down.”

“I have to go.”

“What did she look like?”

“The woman?”

“The woman.”

“She—she was very beautiful… tall, with dark-brown hair pulled back. A yellow dress—she wore a yellow dress. With fabric-covered buttons.”

“The poor woman.”

“What?”

He smiled sadly and relit his pipe, drawing deeply. “That curse of beauty … Finding pleasure in trying to destroy others.”

“Did she—?”

“Destroy me?” Box 241 rested his elbows on his knees and brought his face close to Trudi’s. “Do you think she did?”

“I have to catch the streetcar and—”

“One cup of tea,” he said. “Or one small glass of wine.”

“I would. I really would, but my streetcar is leaving in ten minutes.”

“Where do you have to go?”

“Burgdorf,” she said, wishing immediately she hadn’t told him.

“That’s where this woman lives.”

“Really?”

“Her first letter was mailed from there.”

“I haven’t seen her before today.” Liar, she thought as an image of the book jacket flashed before her.

“I’ll drive you home.”

“No,” she said quickly, wishing she had mailed the letter from Oberkassel or Düsseldorf. “No.”

“I’d be glad to. Thanks to your message, my plans for the afternoon
have changed.” He added as though he really meant it, “I would welcome your company.” Extending his right hand, he introduced himself. “Max Rudnick.”

She mumbled her name, making it impossible to understand as she shook his hand. Far too contrite to resist his invitation, she climbed on the chair across from him, her leather handbag on her knees, both hands clenching the curved handle. Two shimmering flies were knitting their legs on Max Rudnick’s saucer. As the heavy woman who’d eaten the
Bienenstich
walked out of the restaurant, Trudi felt oddly abandoned.

“Tea?” Max Rudnick asked.

She nodded.

“Lemon?”

She nodded. Her feet swung high above the floor.

When the tea arrived, he squeezed the half-moon of lemon above her cup and stirred it. “Here,” he said.

“Thank you.” She burned her tongue as she gulped the tea, all of it, without looking at him. “It’s very good.”

“Not too hot?”

She sucked the tip of her tongue against her palate and shook her head.

“Were you thirsty?”

“I must have been.” Before he could ask her anything else, she said, “Are you from another country?”

“Because of the way I talk?”

“It’s not all that noticeable.”

“The curse of being raised by my Russian grandmother, who played solitaire all day and refused to speak German. I stayed with her, talking Russian till I was old enough to go to school.”

Now she was curious. “How about your parents?”

“Both worked. I was much closer to my grandmother.”

“Where—”

“Köln. I lived there until recently when—when I was … let’s say, transferred.”

Is that why you wrote the ad?
she almost asked, blushing hard as she realized how that would have given away her secret. “Why were you transferred?” she asked instead.

“It happens to teachers.” Max Rudnick studied her carefully. “I don’t know you well enough yet to tell you the reason.…”

The
yet
alarmed her, but she was not about to inquire what he meant. Besides, he was already paying the bill, and then his hand was guiding her shoulder as they walked toward the door.

“At least this time I can see where I’m going,” he said and pointed to his thick glasses. “And to think that there are people who say that only women are vain.”

“They don’t look that bad.”

“Bad enough. But without them I’m practically blind.”

“At least that keeps you out of the war.” She brought her hand to her mouth. How could she be so careless with someone whose politics she didn’t know?

He glanced at her sharply. “That it does.”

“I didn’t mean anything.”

“And I didn’t hear anything.” He led her toward a shabby blue car. “Would you like the window open?” he asked after they sat inside.

She nodded.

He reached for a screwdriver on the back seat, leaned across her, and rotated it inside the hole where the handle for the window used to be. The glass creaked as it moved down. When they crossed the bridge to Oberkassel, a cone of birds swirled from the high girders as the long blast of a barge rose from the river.

“I’d like to talk with you again,” he said.

She stopped breathing. “Why?” she blurted, certain he was trying to prove she’d written the letters.

He looked at her from the side. “Will you say yes if I give you a good reason?”

She shook her head.

“Two good reasons?”

“I really can’t.”

“Three good—”

She had to laugh. “No,” she said. “Not even with seventeen good reasons.”

The curtain in the Blaus’ living room moved when Max Rudnick parked his car in front of the pay-library, and Trudi climbed out before he could shut off the engine.

“I’ll walk you to the door.”

“You don’t have to.” Her burned tongue felt sore.

He pointed to the tobacco sign in the window. “I need to stock up.”

“We’re out of tobacco.”

“Really now?”

“We’ve been waiting for a delivery.”

“Who is we?”

“My father and I.”

“I’ll come back then. For tobacco.”

And he did come back—the following week—but Trudi recognized his blue car in time to dart upstairs, leaving her father to deal with him. From behind the lace curtains of the second-floor hall window, she watched the sidewalk, and it took nearly fifteen minutes before Max Rudnick came out and drove off.

“What did he want?” she asked her father, who was taping the torn cover of a nurse-and-doctor novel.

He didn’t look up. “Tobacco.”

“Did he say anything?” She felt her ears go hot. “About me?”

Her father thought for a moment, then shook his head. Humming softly to himself, he fastened another piece of tape across a tear.

“Then what was he doing here all that time?”

“Looking at books. He borrowed a Western.”

She groaned. “Why did you let him?”

“It’s the kind of business we’re in.”

“Now he has a reason to come back.”

Her father squinted at her. Smiled.

“Oh,” she said. “It’s nothing. Nothing.”

In the days to come, she would keep checking the street, prepared to vanish again, and when Max Rudnick didn’t return the following week and the week after that, she felt relieved; yet, when the due date of the book passed, her relief gave way to a peculiar disappointment that found its expression in periodic calculations of his mounting library fine.

I wish you could visit me
, Ingrid wrote.
The mountains are spectacular, but I miss Burgdorf.
She lived with the schoolchildren, ate her meals with them, taught them everything from grammar to mathematics, gave them homework assignments, and made sure they washed properly before they went to bed. During her third night there, she’d been awakened by screams from the boys’ dorm. They’d had a pillow fight, and one of the pillows had hit a lamp, causing a flame to surge up and set the pillow case on fire.
Thank God we put it out in time
, Ingrid wrote.
Most of the children are homesick. I’ve
found out that boys get rough when they’re afraid, while girls cry.

Though Ingrid didn’t complain directly in her letter about the Hitler-Jugend representative, Fräulein Wiedesprunt, who was in charge of the children’s home, it was evident that she found it difficult to deal with the fault-finding woman, who told her she preferred male teachers and enjoyed setting curfews for everyone, including Ingrid. There were certain hours she was not allowed out, certain places she was not allowed to go.

The first weekend Ingrid was allowed to return to Burgdorf for a visit, she stopped at the pay-library before she saw her parents and told Trudi she dreaded her return to the home. “I thought I’d like teaching, but what’s happening there has little to do with school. They’ve even removed all the crucifixes from the classrooms.”

“Here too.” Trudi took her into the living room, where they sat down on the velvet sofa. “I think it’s like that everywhere.”

“And the praying, even though we aren’t allowed to pray in school, I used to say a short prayer before and after lessons.” The skin on Ingrid’s face looked red and dry. “The children—they really liked it, but once, when one of my classes was observed by Fräulein Wiedesprunt, a girl reminded me that we hadn’t prayed yet.”

Trudi winced.