Stella (4 page)

Gernot Balzer, in my class and our best gymnast, brilliant at floor exercises, nudged me and drew my attention to Mr. Kugler, who was no longer sobbing but was now rubbing his throat and neck with a red-and-blue-checkered handkerchief. Kugler, probably the most absentminded teacher on the staff of any school, then inspected his handkerchief thoroughly, as if something interesting was to be discovered there. Gernot whispered to me, “I saw them, him and Ms. Petersen,” and went on to tell me, still in a whisper, what he had seen on the beach near the three pine
trees. They were both lying down in their swimsuits, he said, they were both reading. It seemed to Gernot that Kugler was reading something aloud to her, and I felt sure it was a chapter from the book on Kokoschka he was writing. He’d already told us about some of its main points. When a painter sees something, he had told us, he makes it his own. Absentminded as he often was at school, he was bringing up his four children in line with a methodical program. I once saw Kugler, whose wife was dead, in the dining room of the Seaview Hotel with his four kids. They had hardly sat down at a table before he was ordering fish frikadellers and apple juice for everyone, along with the paper and crayons that were always on hand at the hotel to amuse tourists’ impatient children. Before they began eating he told them to draw a vase, not its outline seen from the side but from above, looking into the opening at the top. I couldn’t get my mind around the idea that he too might once have shared a pillow with Stella.

I wonder what he thought me capable of, or indeed just what he was after when he turned up at our place one Sunday morning. I’d been cleaning out the barge and was in the boathouse checking on the ropes when I heard Mr. Kugler’s voice. He was talking to my father,
who sounded none too friendly as he answered questions. Very likely he only tolerated the conversation because Mr. Kugler had introduced himself as my teacher. He had noticed, he said, that the rocks we had dumped between the boathouse and the beach were reminiscent of strange creatures. What he claimed to see in them said a lot for his powers of imagination. He thought he had seen one rock like a tadpole, others like a penguin, a monstrous egg, even a Buddha. My father listened to him patiently, laughed now and then, and kept his thoughts to himself.

Mr. Kugler was not surprised when I came out of the boathouse. He said he’d like to take a look around our place, that was all, but the way he stared at me—a cold, appraising assessment—made me doubt it.

The longer I studied your photo, Stella, the more it mysteriously seemed to come alive. Sometimes I thought you were giving me a look of silent understanding, just as I’d expected you would at the first English class after the summer vacation. You see, I’d been expecting us to communicate in secret ways that no one else would notice. When you came into the room and we stood up, I suppose I was feeling more on edge than anyone else. “Good morning, Ms.
Petersen.” I felt restless. Stella had on a white blouse, a plaid skirt, and the necklace she often wore, a thin gold chain with a little gold sea horse hanging from it. I tried to meet her eyes, but she took no notice, and the glance she gave me was almost indifferent.

I wasn’t surprised that right at the beginning of the class she encouraged us to tell her about where we had spent the vacation, and anything special we had noticed—she’d done the same thing last year. “Try to express yourselves in English,” she told us. As no one volunteered, she asked Georg Bisanz, her favorite student, to start the ball rolling, and he was happy to launch into an account, describing the armada of Optimist-class sailing dinghies casting off from the bridge to race for the Hirtshafen Cup, and mentioning his “accident.” Stella suggested “misfortune” as the right word for it. While Georg was still speaking, I sought words I could put together to describe my own most interesting experience over the vacation, but I wasn’t called upon. Stella didn’t say anything like “But now we’ll listen to Christian.” Georg’s account was enough to satisfy her, and she went on to ask what we had found out about the life of George Orwell, whose novel
Animal Farm
we were going to
study next. I was determined not to raise my hand. I looked at her legs, felt her slender body lying next to me again, the body I had embraced, I couldn’t forget what had happened. I wanted the memory we shared to be confirmed by a gesture, a glance; close to her as I was, I didn’t want to be alone with those thoughts. She did not seem surprised when I spoke up, but asked, “Yes, Christian?” So I told the class what I had found out about the author: his time with the police in Burma, his resignation in protest against certain governmental measures, his years living in poverty in London and Paris. As she listened to the information, there was a strange brightness in her eyes, a gleam of recognition or involuntary memory. I thought I saw not just approval but also understanding there, and when she came over to where I was sitting and stood in front of my desk I was expecting her to put a hand on my shoulder—her hand on my shoulder!—but she didn’t; she didn’t venture to touch me. However, I imagined her touch, and I also imagined myself standing up and kissing her, to the amazement of our whole class, and maybe not just them, I thought it possible that some of the young men who I knew had girlfriends would react with a knowing smile or even
applause. I’d have expected some funny reactions from my own class.

Even after class, out in the hallway, you didn’t look up as you passed me. I thought I sensed your displeasure with me for trying to attract attention by standing out from the other students. It may have been her turn to supervise recess, but anyway, she sat on the green bench in the school yard by herself, lost in thought, or at least taking no notice of the smaller kids playing catch and scuffling the whole time.

Just as the school choir was about to sing again, a barrel organ started up out in the street. The younger kids standing by the open windows couldn’t help looking down at the man turning the barrel organ and at his instrument itself; they pushed and nudged each other, and some of them waved to the man, who was playing the tune of “Wooden Heart”:
Can’t you see/I love you?/Please don’t break my heart in two
. Mr. Kugler nodded to me; it was a request to follow him, downstairs and outside. The organ-grinder, a small man with inflamed eyes, was standing under a chestnut tree. He couldn’t understand why Mr. Kugler was asking him to take his barrel organ somewhere else, pointing to a side street leading down to the river, and even when
Mr. Kugler explained that he was disturbing a solemn hour of remembrance, he was unwilling go away. He said he had tunes for all occasions in his mixed repertory, including some lovely sad pieces. Mr. Kugler ignored this hint, saying, “Just please go away,” and put a two-mark piece into the little tin dish resting on the instrument. The man didn’t thank him, but moved slowly toward the low wall running around our school yard, sat down on it, and smoked.

I was the one who threw the first coin on the “Around Bird Island” excursion. I was steering our
Katarina
, with guests from the Seaview Hotel on board, and a few lads from the Hirtshafen gang, barefoot and wearing only bathing trunks. She was on board as well, Stella, sitting in the stern looking relaxed and beautiful. When she climbed in we had merely grasped each other’s hands for a moment. Sonja was sitting beside Stella, looking at her admiringly and fingering her gold bracelet.

I didn’t have to untie the
Katarina
myself; the lads who had begged to come on the trip were ready to help out, and showed their skill when, at my signal, they cast off both ropes. The mist had risen and dispersed long ago, the surface of the sea was glittering faintly,
and where the sun reached the sandy bottom, rippled by the movement of waves now gone, it shone yellowish brown. We turned away, and some of the older passengers looked back to the beach, waving at random to the hotel waiters and the customers in the cafe. Sonja watched our wake running away at the stern. When I asked Stella to take the wheel she happily agreed. I enjoyed standing on the raised platform there beside her, and as if I wanted to correct our course I reached my hand out to the wheel and placed it on hers, feeling her responding to my gentle pressure. Quietly, so that only I could hear, she said in English, “As you see, Christian, I’m a sea captain in training.” And what she didn’t yet know, she said, she’d soon learn when she spent a few days on board her friends’ yacht.

We went around Bird Island, I slackened speed, and now we were gently gliding toward the mighty stone reef that went right down into the depths underwater, and was lost from view in the dark. Some of the tourists were hanging over the side of the
Katarina
, staring down and marveling, telling other people what they could see. Finally they turned to me and asked the usual questions. They could hardly believe the reef was artificial, built several hundred years ago with the
primitive means then available; people had brought the boulders to this spot, methodically lowered them, and piled them up, not high enough to show above the water but so that they were hidden just under the surface, a trap waiting for the keel of any unsuspecting ship coming in.

“So now anyone who wants rocks can come and help themselves,” Stella said.

We gently skirted the reef, and when the sandy promontory came into view, a flock of waterfowl, mostly herring gulls, rose in the air like a white snowstorm. They flapped their wings, they screeched, and for several of the boys aboard that was the signal they’d been waiting for all along. It showed we had reached the right position. The boys went to the side of the boat, circled their arms in the air, and dangled their legs above the water. They all looked at us. The boat lay still now, the water was clear. I threw just one coin at first, and even before it reached the bottom, which was visible there, two of the boys were jumping in and diving toward it, swiftly dog-paddling or swimming to the seabed, and as usual I was fascinated to see their bodies twist and turn, sometimes moving as if in a dance. I threw two more coins and encouraged the
passengers to search their pockets and do the same. Some of them threw coins farther out, others let them drop close to the boat, waiting to see which boy would find and seize it, and if he would manage to keep it after a brief skirmish with the others on the seafloor. Their soundless tussling, accompanied by rising air bubbles, usually ended with the victor putting the coin between his teeth, swimming quickly in and coming on board up the short rope ladder that I had hung over the side. Gray-faced and breathless, they would drop on the nearest seat, and only now did the little divers look to see what their prize was, balancing it on the palm of a hand, showing it to the others.

I hadn’t noticed Sonja jumping in at the same time as the boys, but then I saw her on the bottom, trying to defend herself against a rival diver who was clutching her and trying to open her hand by force. I was thinking of taking the boathook out of its holder, to push Sonja’s adversary away from her with the blunt end, when Stella stripped off her beach dress, tossed it to me, and jumped over the side, body stretched long. A few strokes brought her down to the two children, and she was forcing them apart by pushing the palm of her hand into the boy’s face. She put an arm around Sonja
and brought her up to the rope ladder, but dove down again to retrieve the coin Sonja had lost at the last moment. Then she climbed back on board, watched with approval by the passengers, and sat down beside Sonja, who was doubled over and breathing heavily, and didn’t seem very grateful for the returned coin. But her face brightened when Stella held her close, stroked her cheek, put one of her feet beside one of Sonja’s, and said, with amusement, “Look, we both have webbed toes!” Then she reminded Sonja that every homecoming from a trip around Bird Island had to end with a swimming race. The boys were already preparing to jump in, and as we passed the bridge outside the hotel I gave the word. They all jumped into the water and swam ashore, each in his own style. Some were doing dog paddle, some the crawl, some forged swiftly ahead, many dived down for a moment and tried to swim faster under the water, many slowed their faster neighbors by clutching their legs or getting on their backs. Sonja was lost from sight in the spray and air bubbles thrown up by the contenders.

Stella wouldn’t take part in this race. When I encouraged her to join in, she simply said, “It wouldn’t be fair, Christian.” At the time I didn’t know that she’d
swum in some kind of championship—I guess at the university level—and had been on the medley relay team that came in second.

Anyway, Stella, I wasn’t satisfied with the reason you gave, and I told you so again when we were lying under the pine trees that warm, windless afternoon. We lay side by side, only in our swimsuits, and I was stroking your back. I asked why she wouldn’t join in the race, and she said, “That’s easy to answer, Christian. I knew I mustn’t win. If you’re so much better than the others you mustn’t compete. It would be unfair, a cheap sort of victory.”

I didn’t agree, I thought the reason she gave was patronizing, even arrogant. I said, “But being better is something you’ve achieved for yourself. It’s an honest ability.”

She smiled and said, sighing, “Oh, Christian, you need the right conditions if you’re going to get a result that means anything. The conditions have to be right.” She kissed me, a hasty kiss, then she jumped up and ran lightly down to the water. “Come on, come in with me.”

Swimming fast, twisting and turning, we made for deeper water, reaching out for each other. I drew
her to me, pressed close to her body and held her. I’ll never forget the look of amazement and happy consent on her face. Our bodies pressed against each other as if they’d been waiting for this. We laughed when the buoyancy of the water made it hard for us to stand there. I pointed to the two red flags blowing in the breeze—just scraps of fabric—warning swimmers of an eel trap at that spot, and called, “Come on, Stella, once around the flags and the winner can make a wish.” And without waiting for her to agree, I swam away. At first I didn’t look to see if she was following, I was swimming as fast as I could, the flags were bobbing in the moderate swell, I hadn’t quite reached them when I glanced behind me. Stella had accepted my invitation, taken my challenge, she was joining in, she was following me, doing long crawl strokes. I thought she was taking it easy as she swam, sure of her victory, and that spurred me on. Reaching the flags she changed her style and now, as if in high spirits, she was doing the backstroke without decreasing the distance between us. I put on a spurt, or what I thought was a spurt, and drew away by several yards, by now almost sure of reaching the beach ahead of her. But then she raised an arm and waved, the kind of wave someone
sure of doing better would give, cheerful, forbearing, and she accelerated and swiftly caught up, her legs kicking and whirling, as if she were being driven by a ship’s propeller.