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 (72 page)

The day after the tunnel was completed, Leo Montag was fixing sugar-and-margarine bread for the boy in the kitchen, when Frau Neimann pulled Trudi into the hall. Her pretty hands were rough, chapped, and only a few flecks of polish still clung to her fingernails.

“He hates me,” she whispered urgently.

“Who?”

“Konrad. Because of the cat.”

“Oh no. He just misses his cat.”

“Has he said anything to you, Fräulein Montag?” Frau Neimann was watching her with such intensity that Trudi could only shake her head. “He’s the only one I have left. I can’t bear him hating me.”

“Konrad doesn’t hate you.”

“Are you sure? He talks more with you than with me.”

Trudi felt mortified by her sudden satisfaction that the boy preferred her to his mother. “I’m sure he can see that you feel terrible about the cat.”

For a moment, the woman’s eyes looked almost amused. Then she smiled. But beneath that smile lay something else, the possibility of an
enormous coldness. “It’s not the cat I care about,” she murmured.

Trudi didn’t know what to answer. “Your hands,” she finally said, “we need to do something about your hands.”

“My hands?”

“Wait here.” She rushed up the stairs and into her room, grimacing to herself as she grasped her last bottle of hand lotion.
“You can tell so much by a woman’s hands,”
Frau Simon had taught her. Sometimes Trudi had done without shampoo, using soap on her hair so that she could afford the lotion. If she applied it sparingly, this bottle would last her a few months.

Before she could change her mind, she took it downstairs. “For you,” she said.

Frau Neimann eagerly accepted the gift, then hesitated. “Only if you have more for yourself.” She extended the bottle halfway toward Trudi.

“You keep it.”

“We could share it.”

“While you’re here. But then it’s yours to take along.”

Erna Neimann’s face turned bone white, and she leaned against the wall.

“What is it?” Trudi took hold of her elbow.

“You’re thinking of sending us away. That’s why you’re giving me this.”

“No. No. You can stay. As long as we can keep you safe here. But that may change. You know that.”

Frau Neimann nodded. “I know.”

It confused Trudi that despite the suffering all around her, some parts of life were going on in a normal way and that she could enjoy them—like the scents from the new grass and the blossoms of the lilac bushes, the warmth of the spring sun on her arms, the playful dips of the swallows as they swooped down to the brook. Somehow, this spring was infusing her with new strength and hope, a deceptive hope, she reminded herself, and yet it soothed her, took her back to the river where, in the shallows below the weeping willows, the water had taken on a peculiar shade of opaque green as though it had soaked up the color of the new leaves, a green that suggested tranquillity, reverence almost. On the opposite bank, sheep grazed in the meadow.

She wished she could take Konrad to the river, but since that would have endangered him, she painted the Rhein for him with words that let him see how, beyond the sheltered bay, the river kept flowing, steady and clear, though there certainly were rocks in the riverbed that created some turbulence. With her stories, she took the boy to the meadows and the fairgrounds and the Sternhof, let him fill his chest with the spring air, and found that, in the telling, all those places became even more real for her. She relished the power of the stories to keep the outdoor world alive for the boy and, like a magician, replaced the sheep with white cows and positioned a parrot in the tower of the
Rathaus
, just for Konrad.

She didn’t tell the boy about the caricatures of Jews in the newspaper; about the pastor in Neuss who’d been sent to the KZ for harboring Jews; about a bank clerk only four blocks away who’d been forced to take off her clothes and then had been beaten with rifle butts for giving two hard-boiled eggs to her Jewish neighbor who’d been about to be deported. She didn’t tell the boy how often she woke up at night, paralyzed by what could happen to her and her father if they were caught, and how she’d get stuck trying to decide what would be the worst possible fate.

The boy would ask her about those white cows whenever she’d return from one of her walks, and she’d tell him there’d been eight on the other side of the river, the same number as the first day she’d mentioned them because to take any of them away might have terrified him.

Konrad had been told to stay away from the windows so that no one could see him from outside, but one morning Trudi found him behind the lace curtain of the dining room, his face pressed against the glass.

“What are you doing?” Quickly, she pulled him away and scanned the street. It was empty.

“Waiting. For my cat.”

She took him into the living room and sat with him on the velvet sofa, wishing she could get a cat for him. But eventually Konrad would have to leave for another hiding place, and a cat would only mean one more loss.

“If you swear not to go near the window again, I’ll tell you a story about a cat.”

He nodded.

“A very special cat.”

“I swear.” He drew closer.

She laid one arm around his shoulders. Both their feet dangled about the same distance above the floor. She liked that. “It’s about a cat and the father of my school friend Eva.…Her father, you see, he was ill. No one knew what was wrong with him, but he was too weak to get up, so weak he couldn’t lift a teacup if it was half full.…” She pretended to pick up a cup and let her wrist go limp. “Her father also was deadly afraid. Of cats. He believed cats choke people by sleeping on their throats. That’s why he kept his windows closed every single night.”

“Even in summer?” Konrad asked, just as Trudi had asked Eva nearly twenty years before.

“Even in summer.” She remembered how amazed she, too, had felt, and she smiled at the boy. “But Eva figured out that her father’s illness was that terrible fear. She was only a little older than you and, like you, very smart. Eva figured if she could take her father’s fear of cats away, he’d get well again. One night—after her parents were asleep—she sneaked into their bedroom and opened the window.” She described the window for the boy, even the wind that billowed the fine lace curtains and two flies on the windowsill. “And before Eva could step back, a cat she’d never seen before—a sleek, amber cat with white paws—”

“My cat had white paws.”

“She must have been a good-looking cat.”

“She was.” Konrad sounded pleased.

“Well, you see, that cat with paws like your cat’s—it did exactly what Eva’s father had been afraid of. It settled itself on his throat.…” Trudi raised one hand to the boy’s throat. “And just when Eva was going to yank the cat from her father’s throat, he opened his eyes. Like this.” She widened her eyes. “Eva’s father stared into the cat’s eyes. They were like the lights of a faraway car that’s coming closer—you’ve seen that, haven’t you?”

Konrad nodded.

“Eva’s father couldn’t look away. But he kept breathing … breathing.…” Trudi stopped, trying to figure where the story was taking her, letting it unfurl within her till she could see Eva standing by her father’s bed, wearing her thin green dress from first grade. And then she told Konrad what she saw. “Eva stood by her father’s bed for a
long time.… Her feet were freezing. But her father didn’t notice her. He didn’t look at anyone except that cat—the cat’s eyes, that is—and neither of them blinked. Not even once. Toward morning the cat arched itself up from the throat of Eva’s father, brushed its whiskers against the underside of his chin, and leapt through the bedroom window without touching the windowsill. It looked as if it were flying, and Eva didn’t hear it touch the ground at all.”

Konrad let out a deep breath. “I bet my cat could fly like that.”

Trudi gave him a hug. “She must be a remarkable cat.”

“When I find her, she can sleep on my throat.”

“That may not be so good,” Trudi said quickly.

“Do you think I’ll find her?”

“Have you ever heard that cats have nine lives?”

He frowned.

She took his hands into hers and counted nine of his fingers. “Let’s say your cat had her first life with you and her second life with the little girl from the railroad station.…” She folded two of his fingers toward his palm. “How many lives does she have left to find you?”

He looked at his fingers. “Seven,” he said. “Did Eva see her cat again?”

“I don’t believe so. But then it wasn’t her cat to start out with.”

“My cat was mine. Since she was a kitten. My father brought her home.” He blinked as though he’d startled himself by talking about his father.

Maybe he can’t let himself think about his father yet, Trudi thought. Maybe all he can let himself think of is that cat. She rubbed his hands between hers. “Eva went back to sleep after the cat was gone,” she told him, “and when she woke up, she heard her father’s voice downstairs. He was up and dressed—she’d never seen him up and dressed—and he lifted her up when she came running down the steps and—”

Konrad interrupted. “Before, he couldn’t even lift a cup.”

“That’s right. Before that cat came to lie on his throat, he was very weak. You know what he told Eva when he set her back down on the ground? He told her he’d had a dream that night, a dream of a cat that had made him well.”

“Did Eva tell him the truth?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because he was cured. Better to let him believe what he needed to believe.”

“What if what you want to believe is a lie?”

Trudi waited.

“Like about my cat… Sometimes my mother lies to me.”

“I can tell that your mother loves you a lot.”

He nodded as though that had nothing to do with it.

“Running away and hiding … the way you and your mother have to—it’s awfully hard, Konrad. Some people may do things they normally wouldn’t do.”

“I don’t think there was a little girl.”

Trudi stroked his hair.

“I think my cat still lives in that railroad station.”

“Well—it wouldn’t be such a bad place. Just think … it would be warm enough and people would feed the cat, even play with her.”

“I’ll go there. When the war is finished.”

She felt dizzy with a longing for peace, a longing as powerful as the passion with which she used to will her body to grow, as consuming as the passion that had fueled her revenge on the boys who’d humiliated her. And what she wanted more than anything that moment was for all the differences between people to matter no more—differences in size and race and belief—differences that had become justification for destruction.

Nights, the woman and the boy slept in the kitchen. Leo Montag had rehearsed their escape with them so many times—a quick rap against the wall—that even the boy would automatically reach for his blankets and run down the stairs. One of the trunks in the cellar was left open for the bedding, and the two would throw everything in there, close the lid, climb into the damp tunnel, and pull the empty potato bin into place. On the Blaus’ side, they’d push the armoire aside, replace it, and hide inside. Herr Blau kept a feather puff and pillows for them in the armoire, and Herr Hesping had drilled air holes into the top, which you could only see if you climbed on a chair.

To stay inside the tunnel for longer than a few minutes was even harder than they’d thought because water kept seeping through the ground. At first, Herr Blau had tried to line the tunnel with blankets, but they’d soaked through so quickly that they were useless. Finally, Trudi remembered that the Weskopps used to go camping, and she
managed to trade two years of free library books for the huge tent, dodging the widow’s question about what she was going to do with it. After Herr Blau cut the green canvas to fit the walls of the tunnel, the moisture still kept coming through, but at least the woman and the boy didn’t get smeared by mud each time they fled to the tunnel.

So far, none of the visitors to the Montags’ house had been a real danger to the fugitives, and if any of them noticed that Trudi and her father rushed them out of the front door soon after they arrived, they didn’t say so.

“We’ll stop over soon,” Leo would say, or, “Come by the library tomorrow when it’s open. I’ll have time to talk then.”

But it hurt Trudi, having to lie to Matthias Berger to keep him from coming back. And her father—he used to look forward to those visits too. Matthias had been playing chess with him about once a week and had ended each of his visits by playing the piano. His lessons with Fräulein Birnsteig had refined his technique without diminishing his intensity. He was accustomed to staying for hours at a time—an impossible risk now with Frau Neimann and Konrad in the house.

“The piano is broken,” Trudi told him.

“Let me take a look. Maybe I can fix it.”

“It needs major work. I—I’ll let you know when it’s ready.”

“I could still play chess with your father.”

“He hasn’t been up to chess much lately. Better to wait for the piano.…”

Matthias left, confused she could tell, as she watched the slope of his shoulders. Even before he’d turned away from her, she’d already missed him. She worried about his headaches; though he never complained about them, she usually could see when he was about to get one because he’d press his palms against his temples as if to keep the pain out, and she’d make him camomile tea or urge him to lie down on the sofa until he felt better.

She would have liked to tell the truth to Matthias and Eva and the Abramowitzs, who’d been forced to vacate their house and now lived in one furnished room on Lindenstrasse, but Emil Hesping had impressed on her that each additional person who knew about the fugitives increased the risk of capture. “For all of us,” he’d said.

He was against including Frau Weiler in any way, but since it was impossible to feed four on food rations that were barely enough for two, Leo managed to enlist Frau Weiler’s support by asking her if she
could spare some groceries for two people he knew were in need. “That’s all I can tell you, Hedwig,” he said when she wanted to know more.