Stones From the River Read online

  To see how closely those men resembled the way they had advertised themselves, Trudi had answered two of those ads and had arranged a meeting with both men—who of course did not know about each other—one Sunday afternoon at four in the same restaurant in Düsseldorf. She arrived before they did. Both looked older and stodgier than she’d expected, and they ended up at tables next to one another, each with a maroon kerchief in the chest pocket of his suit jacket, the sign by which, according to her letter, she would recognize him. Although their eager, nervous eyes evaluated every woman in the restaurant, they didn’t even consider that she might be the one they were waiting for.

  At first it all felt like a hoax to Trudi: their impatience, their discomfort seemed funny to her, and she felt a peculiar satisfaction when they fussed with their maroon kerchiefs to make sure they were still in place; but what persisted in her long after that encounter was an overwhelming hate, a hate so ugly that she was afraid it would make her ugly inside, too.

  As the priest raised the blessed sacrament toward the dark-eyed apostles in the “Last Supper” mural above the marble altar, Jutta blew her nose and Fräulein Raudschuss shrank further into herself. Klaus Malter bowed his head, and Judge Spiecker buried his face in his hands. As Trudi watched them pray, she felt impatient with them and all the others who found such easy solace in church; and yet, at the same time, she envied them because—until that day in the barn—she too had known that solace.

  The members of the choir filed down the stairs and toward the altar to receive communion, and when Trudi raised her face and opened her lips to receive the round white wafer, a sudden longing for a child of her own cast her neck, her thighs in cool sweat. Though she told herself that she did not want children, all she could think of was what she did not have and would never have. She could no longer name anything worthwhile about her life and knew that the rich lawyer’s daughter would get whatever she wanted.

  That night, Trudi tried to evoke that old dream in which she grew. Though she had tried to temper her consuming wish to grow by reminding herself of how Pia accepted her size, she wanted that dream—just for now—wanted to feel her arms and legs stretching, her body growing agile, wanted that familiar bliss of the dream to blunt the edges of grief over her love for Klaus, which was turning into hate as other loves had before. But what she dreamed of instead was the jetty, the Braunmeiers’ jetty—only it no longer jutted into the current but arched high across the Rhein in one mass of earth and stones. Klaus was shouting her name from the other side of the river, but she knew the arch would collapse if she stepped on it.

  At daylight she awoke with the panic of Klaus being lost to her forever. She knew she had to return to the Braunmeiers’ jetty, and she was afraid; yet, she slipped on her clothes as if acting out the final phases of her dream and walked through the cold, vacant streets, past windows that were still obscured by wooden shutters, and as the houses gradually fell back behind her as if wiped from the surface of the town, she smelled the river, that profuse scent of water and trees. Fallen leaves crunched beneath the soles of her black lace-up shoes, and when she reached the summit of the dike, two freighters with red smoke stacks struggled against the current. The jetty was the way it had always been—flat and solid and surrounded on three sides by water. It didn’t look nearly as terrible as all those times she’d pictured it.

  As she walked toward the jetty, it came to her that what Klaus had done was not all that different from what the boys had done. While they had violated her with their curiosity and contempt, Klaus’ violation lay in his silence, in his pretense that nothing had happened. Her feelings toward all of them were so jumbled and intertwined that it made sense to be here in this place she had avoided, and when she dropped to her knees in the circle of sand at the end of the jetty and raised a rock, she suddenly was thirteen again—only this time she did not hurl the rock into the river, but placed it in front of her knees like some offering to an unnamed power and murmured, “This one is for you, Klaus Malter.”

  She took that panic she felt at not being able to be with Klaus and added four stones—one stone for loving him, one for hating him, one for her longing, one for her rage. The rocks were cold to her touch, and she set a fifth one—for being ashamed of loving Klaus without him loving her back—on top of that formation, then other stones for feelings she couldn’t understand, piling them up while those feelings welled up a hundredfold, making her jaw ache and filling her chest until she was nauseated. All at once she saw herself as a child standing outside the sewing room where her tall, beautiful mother used to be locked up, felt the unyielding door against her raised fists while her father’s arms drew her away. “Your mother has found a more peaceful place.” That awful darkness that filled her soul now—it must have felt like that until, finally, years later, the recognition had broken through that she would never see her mother again.

  “People die if you don’t love them enough” Her brother had died before his birth, her mother the week before Trudi’s fourth birthday. The last year before her mother had died, Trudi had sometimes felt embarrassed for her. And she had never wanted her brother to be born. The day of her brother’s funeral, when her mother had washed Trudi’s face by the brook, she’d pointed beneath the surface of the brook, where their faces bobbed silver among tongue-shaped leaves. That moment of clarity—of how things could be—what had happened to it? Had it been swirled away by the muddy flow of the brook? Or had her mother reached for her hand and taken her back to the house, surrendering their images, intact, to the water?

  Teeth chattering, Trudi added stones for her mother, for her brother, stones for Georg, stones for Fritz and Hans-Jürgen and Paul and Eva and Brigitte Raudschuss, until her head was spinning. Bracing herself on her hands, she waited for the dizziness to subside. It felt like the end of something, the death of something—and yet, as her eyes followed the river, she could all at once see how the end of every motion became the beginning of the next, how the water that came up against a rock found a new pattern as it joined the rest of the stream, how the crest of every wave became the descent into the rocking hollow, where the movement of the water took on a momentary apple-green sheen.

  Trudi sucked in a long breath, letting the power of the river flow through her. The pile of stones in front of her made her feel safe, made this place hers—more intimately hers than anything that had ever belonged to her before, more so even than Pia’s island of the little people.

  She saw Pia wrapping her arms around herself, rocking herself, giving her words, which—until now—Trudi had not understood: “Some day you’ll remember this.” Slowly Trudi raised her arms, hesitating before she brought them around herself as far as they could stretch. What else had Pia said? “No one but you can change that.” They’d been talking about that dreadful loneliness that comes from believing there’s no one else like you. Trudi felt the solid shape of her body, held herself—careful at first, then exuberant—as she rocked that body in her arms, claiming it as hers.

  Prayers in church for the Vaterland became a custom, and frequently the assistant pastor—that’s how some people still thought of the fat priest though he’d since become their pastor, while the little priest lived out his last frail years in the Theresienheim, pampered by the nuns, who shaved him and cooked the gravies he craved—would add a fervent prayer for the Führer, his hands raised toward the black marble altar, where five stocky candles burned evenly. When he christened newborns—his favorite ceremony since it always included an invitation to the celebration meal—his hands would draw the sign of the cross on their foreheads, lips, and hearts, and he’d rejoice if the infant was named Adolf, by far the most popular name for boys that year.

  In school, a brisk Heil Hitler had replaced the morning prayer, and only a few teachers and students dared not to raise their arms in the prescribed greeting. Brown shirts and uniforms were everywhere—you saw them in stores, in restaurants, in train stations—trim and crisp, marking those who didn’t wear th
em as outsiders, part of a mismatched crowd that shrank with each day.

  For Trudi, it was amazing to discover how many reasons other than size could turn you into an outsider—your religion, your race, your opinions. Enemies could endanger you with rumors; friends might involuntarily destroy you by repeating something they’d heard you say.

  She saw people arrested for their political beliefs, and she watched how Herr Stosick, who used to be one of the most respected men in Burgdorf, was made an outsider. The day after his son’s funeral he’d been demoted from his position of principal at the Protestant school to that of a teacher. People shunned and harassed him as though he had caused his son’s death. His salary was cut to less than half, and he could no longer afford payments on his new car. When he tried to sell it, he received such ridiculous offers that Leo Montag, who didn’t really want a car, decided to buy it from him at a proper price.

  The majority of the men in the chess club voted to move their meetings from his house to the narrow room in back of Potter’s bar. Nearly half of them wanted Günther Stosick to resign from the club altogether, but when Leo Montag and five other members threatened to resign along with Herr Stosick, they agreed to let him stay, though certainly not as president.

  Quite a few of the members were acting like soldiers even though they were civilians. When Leo Montag turned down the nomination for president, the chess club was without a leader for months until the pharmacist convinced several members that he was the best candidate. Two of the chess sets were stolen from Potter’s bar, and Monday evenings took on a friction that went far beyond the challenge of the game.

  Günther Stosick appeared at only three of the meetings, looking decades older with his hairless skull. His skin was puffy, unhealthy, and he’d hesitate before making even the simplest opening move, his rootless hands—no longer safely anchored in abundant hair—hovering above one chess piece, then another, as though he’d lost his old decisiveness.

  At school he had been pressured to join the Nazis like others who were employed by the government, but he had managed to stay out, and he was relieved that the party was currently closed to new members. “To ban opportunists and ensure selectivity,” the pharmacist had told Trudi and her father when he’d reminded them that it was a disgrace for any business owner in Burgdorf not to belong.

  “Why would they want someone like me?” Trudi had asked him, her eyes challenging him with the knowledge of her otherness.

  After that, the pharmacist left her alone, but whenever he came in to buy his cigars, he urged Leo to make sure he joined as soon as the membership opened again.

  “I’m too old for all that,” Leo objected.

  “Nonsense, Leo.” The pharmacist gripped his elbow. “You’re a month younger than I.”

  “Then I must be too young.”

  “It’s nothing to laugh about.” The pharmacist’s neck expanded. “I can put you on a waiting list right now. All you have to do is pay five Mark.”

  “It is not for me, Herr Neumaier.”

  “Someone might find all this highly suspicious.”

  “What I find suspicious is your five-Mark waiting list.”

  Herr Neumaier raised both hands as if to ward off an attack. “I wouldn’t turn in another chess player. But you are being careless.”

  He was more successful with Frau Stosick. When she came to his pharmacy to buy ointment for a rash that had sprung up on her hands, he inquired, “Since when has your husband been a member?”

  “He isn’t,” she mumbled and drew the black coat she’d sewed for her son’s funeral closer around herself.

  “Haven’t you lost enough, Frau Stosick?”

  She looked down at her hands and rubbed the raw knuckle of her thumb.

  “Do you have any idea what danger your husband is in? He’ll lose his job. You’ll lose your house and end up on the street. Is that what you want?”

  She shook her head.

  “We have to change this. Immediately. You should be at least on my waiting list. I’ll take care of it for you right now so there won’t be any trouble for not having done it before. This is what you’ll do. You pay five Mark for each of you, and once you’re members, you’ll get the papers in the mail.”

  “But then I won’t have enough money for the medicine.”

  “What’s more important? Your husband will be grateful to you.”

  But her husband was not grateful when she told him, and he swore he would tear up the papers once they arrived. In the meantime, the two of them waited, a silence between them which grew colder with each day that Herr Stosick had to face a classroom filled with children whose arms snapped upward from their bodies with an enthusiastic Heil Hitler, with each day he had to forfeit the words of warning that he yearned to howl at them.

  Though Ingrid was at the university now, she still lived at home and took the streetcar to Düsseldorf. She was studying to be a teacher. Lately, several of her professors had either been fired, retired, or pushed into insignificant positions. Their replacements seemed eager to serve without critique of the new regime.

  “None of them wants to call attention to himself,” Ingrid told Trudi on Sunday afternoon when they were taking a walk. “I pray for them every day.”

  “Even with all your other prayers?”

  “I had to add one more rosary.”

  “That means you’ll have even less time for your friends.” It sounded petty and jealous and slipped out before Trudi could stop herself.

  Ingrid frowned. But then she smiled as though it had just occurred to her that martyrs had been in that position all along—defending their devotion to God. Not that she was in an arena about to face the lions.… Still, Trudi was good practice in case she ever had to face a real adversary. “It’s what God wants me to do,” she said firmly.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Ingrid looked disappointed, as if she’d been denied the opportunity to sacrifice herself for her belief.

  They were passing the Weinharts’ meadow where, behind the fence, all the cows stood crowded in one clump as always, while the sheep were scattered all over the meadow, their black heads bobbing from pale woolly bodies as they grazed on the last blades of grass.

  “It’s not that I decided by myself to do one more rosary,” Ingrid tried to explain. It’s—I know I have to do it, but it doesn’t come from me.”

  “Like hearing a voice?””

  “It’s not like hearing or seeing anything … more like knowing it.”

  Trudi nodded.

  “I have no idea how it gets inside me. It’s just there. And then I have to obey.”

  “What if you don’t?

  Ingrid looked startled.

  “You’ve never tried?”

  “I wouldn’t dare.”

  “But what if you don’t think it is right?”

  Ingrid’s face turned scarlet as if Trudi had reminded her of something she wanted to forget. “It’s not mine to decide.”

  Trudi stared at her, hard, trying to pull from her what it was she had done that wasn’t right. “You can tell me,” she whispered and reached for her friend’s hand. But the instant she felt Ingrid’s skin against hers, she no longer wanted to know, because what she sensed had to do with Ingrid’s father, with that discomfort she felt whenever she saw his eyes settle on his daughter with a look that no father should give his daughter. She heard him chuckle, heard him tell Ingrid to wear decent clothes. Swiftly, she dropped Ingrid’s hand, but it was too late: she saw the shadow of Ingrid’s father against the slanted ceiling of Ingrid’s room, saw him lay one finger across Ingrid’s lips as she sat up with a start in her bed.

  “Sometimes I think I dream things.…” Ingrid’s voice was far away.

  Trudi felt ill. “You don’t have to …”

  Ingrid’s expression was as blank and pious as that of saints about to be tortured.

  “Nothing you don’t want to—”

  “But you don’t understand.”

  “Yo
u’ll come to America with me,” Trudi said quickly.

  “When I visit Aunt Helene and Uncle Stefan.”

  “When are you going?”

  “Oh—I don’t know yet. Whenever I want. Their house, it’s more like a palace, really, six stories high, with marble fireplaces and tapestries. Other people live there too, in apartments, but Uncle Stefan built the house.” Words tumbled from her with details of her aunt’s stories about America: the clear lake in which her cousins swam; the soft toilet paper—not harsh and gray like in Germany, her aunt had said; the elevator in the apartment house.… Already she could see herself with Ingrid on a ship bound for America, the land of tall buildings and cowboys, looking back at the receding shoreline of Germany and at this day, this conversation that had persuaded Ingrid to accompany her.

  But it was Ingrid who went on a trip—and not with Trudi but with her family, to visit her uncle in München over Christmas. Trudi saw them off at the train station. While Ingrid’s parents and brother got settled in the compartment, Ingrid leaned from the open window of the train.

  “Here.” Trudi gave her the present she had wrapped for her.

  Ingrid looked embarrassed. “I don’t have anything for you.”

  Trudi smiled hard to hide her disappointment. “I don’t mind.” She’d bought Ingrid’s present four weeks earlier, taking pleasure in imagining her friend’s surprise when she’d open it, as well as her own delight when Ingrid would hand her a beautifully wrapped gift.

  “I’ll buy your present in München,” Ingrid called over the whistle of the train. “Can I open this now?”

  “It’s bad luck to celebrate anything early.”

  “Let the girl open it,” Herr Baum called out from inside the train.