Stones From the River (37 page)

Herr Bilder’s brown uniform concealed the bulk better than his wife’s flimsy dress. Trudi had heard that he’d tried to get into the SS, and while he was certainly fanatical and bureaucratic enough for them, his body had not met the elite qualifications. But the SA took anyone—especially those who liked to bash heads.

Long ago people had stopped asking the Bilders if they’d heard from their son. Since they never mentioned Rainer, his name had joined the informal list of those whose names—because of embarrassment to their families or church—were unspoken as if they’d never been born: the barber who’d been discovered at the zoo in Düsseldorf humping a wild boar; the woman who’d run off to Portugal with another woman and left her children with her husband; the man who’d been shot in the Opernhaus during the second act of
Die Zauberfløte
while robbing the ticket office; the nurse who’d been sentenced to thirteen years in prison for killing unborn babies, which was considered a
Sabotageakt
—act of sabotage—against Germany’s racial future. You might think about those people, shudder at their indiscretions, but you would not speak their names unless, perhaps, in a whisper to someone you knew well.

A waiter in a white jacket brought the champagne, and Trudi raised her glass to her father. “To your birthday.”

He smiled. “To my birthday—Oh, no.”

“What is it?”

“The Bilders.”

The two had hoisted their bodies into standing positions and were ambling toward them. Pinned to Frau Bilder’s massive bosom was the silver
Ehrenkreuz der deutschen Mutter
—the cross of honor for the German mother. Every year on the birthday of Hitler’s mother, August 12,
kinderreiche
—child-rich—mothers throughout Germany were celebrated with the
Ehrenkreuz:
the most cherished in gold for eight or more children, silver for six, and bronze for four.
Das Kind adelt die Mutter
—the child ennobles the mother—was the inscription.

“A special occasion?” Frau Bilder inquired.

“My father’s birthday.”

“Happy birthday, Herr Montag.”

“They didn’t bring your food yet.” Her husband peered at Trudi’s father.

“It’ll be here soon enough.”

“What did you order?”

“Wiener Schnitzel”

“I had the
Rouladen”

“Exquisite,” Frau Bilder sighed. “They were exquisite.”

“A wonderful gravy.” Her husband clicked his tongue.

“The best I’ve had.”

“We almost ordered the
Sauerbraten.”

“Next time.”

“Yes, next time,
Liebling”

“Their potato pancakes are better this week than the dumplings.”

“Nice and crisp.”

“They serve a spectacular rainbow trout.”

“With lemon and butter.”

“On a bed of parsley.”

“Fresh parsley.”

“Always fresh here.”

“Don’t forget to order the
Käsekuchen
for dessert.”

“They have a fantastic
Käsekuchen
here.”

“Last time I had the
Bienenstich”

“I hope you ordered soup?” Herr Bilder’s eyes took on a glazed look.

“Their pea soup is like a stew.” His wife sucked her teeth.

“That thick.”

“But smooth. So smooth.”

Trudi glanced at her father, who was listening with a pained expression to Herr and Frau Bilder as they blocked his view of the pianist, the front of their thighs bulging against the tablecloth as if waiting to taste his birthday dinner. Three layers of white flesh draped from their chins, and their nostrils were flared as if not to miss any of the culinary scents.

“Your son—” Trudi started. “Rainer.… Now I have been wondering if you’ve heard anything about him.”

Frau Bilder took a long breath as though she’d suddenly come to life.

Her husband blinked and pulled out his pocket watch.

“We must go,” she said.

“Yes, we’re already late.”

“Happy birthday, again, Herr Montag.”

With amazing swiftness, they moved toward the door and, miraculously, squeezed through at the same moment without getting stuck.

“Why do I suddenly no longer feel hungry?” Trudi’s father asked.

“Because those two have already eaten for us.”

“That was cruel, you know.”

“I know.”

“Once in a while I do think about Rainer.”

“He must be about sixteen now.”

The waiter brought their food, and as they began to eat, they heard a thud. A blind man with a German shepherd had walked against the glass enclosure right next to them. A bewildered look on his face, he yanked the leash and took a few steps back. He was young, in his late twenties, with skin that looked chapped from the cold. His hands were bare.

“Come on, doggie doggie doggie,” one of the SA men at the next table called. His pasty face was splotched with acne.

His friends were laughing.

Trudi felt her father go rigid.

The blind man said something to the dog and, tightening his fingers on the leash, let the dog move forward, following it—again—into the glass wall. His round face showed an embarrassment so acute that Trudi wanted to look away. As he backed up for the third time, the dog kept straining forward as though hypnotized by its reflection.

Trudi pushed her chair away from the table, making an ugly, scraping sound on the tiled floor.

Her father laid one hand on her wrist and shook his head. “He’d be even more embarrassed if he knew we were here.”

“Here, doggie doggie.…”

“Idioten”
Trudi muttered. “Thugs.”

Her father looked alarmed.

“They couldn’t hear me,” she whispered.

“… doggie, doggie.”

Once more, the blind man walked into the enclosure, his free hand stretched out as though he were expecting it, and if he felt anger, he hid it well behind a resignation that must have come from years of finding himself against obstacles.

Trudi wondered if he sensed the faces on the other side of that fragile wall. Though she still wanted to rush outside and help him, she knew it would mean alerting him to his audience.

“He must have borrowed someone else’s dog,” her father said.

She nodded. “His own dog probably died.” Right away she wished she hadn’t said that. Even here, she thought, we can’t get away from thinking about Seehund. “Or maybe,” she offered quickly, “it’s his dog but hasn’t been properly trained yet.”

Her father let out a deep breath when—with his fifth attempt—the man finally cleared the glass wall and walked away, his back stiff, depending on the dog who had betrayed him.

The people of Burgdorf went to parades and speeches—some, like the taxidermist, because they genuinely believed in their leaders; others, like Herr Blau, because not to go would call attention to yourself. Most practiced the silence they were familiar with, a silence nurtured by fear and complicity that would grow beyond anything they could imagine, mushrooming into the decades after the war which, some began to fear, was about to happen.

To justify this silence, they tried to find the good in their government or fled into the mazes of their own lives, turning away from the community. They knew how not to ask questions; they had been prepared for it by government and church. Over the years, they had forgotten that early urge to question. For some, their one act of resistance was that—whenever they could avoid it—they didn’t raise their arm in the
Heil Hitler
greeting. But others, like Herr Immers and Herr Weskopp, used that greeting whenever they could, often as a challenge to test those they encountered.

At his son’s engagement party to Irmtraud Boden that May of 1936, Anton Immers entertained his guests with stories of the First World War, as though he’d really been a soldier, and by midnight—when the beer kegs were empty and the butcher had opened five bottles of expensive wine—his few remaining guests, all members of his
Stammtisch
—began to recall that they’d seen him in battle, performing incredible feats of courage.

“I’ll show you the picture of me in uniform,” he said.

“We’ve seen it, Anton,” they assured him.

But he insisted on leading them to the butcher shop, and the unsteady procession staggered to Alexander Sturm’s building. When the
butcher set down his briefcase and unlocked his shop, he pointed to the framed enlargement of the photo that Herr Abramowitz had taken of him in Kurt Heidenreich’s uniform, and the men toasted him with an emotional
“Heil Hitler”

Herr Immers bowed to them. “The one regret I have … that I didn’t hire a real photographer.”

“It’s a good likeness, Anton,” Herr Buttgereit consoled him.

“A good …” Herr Neumaier frowned as if trying to remember what he’d been about to say.

“Exactly like you, Anton,” Herr Weskopp confirmed.

The photo hung between two other pictures—a close-up of Adolf Hitler, showing him from the shoulders up while giving a speech, and St. Adrian, the patron saint of butchers and soldiers. To show proper respect, of course, the Führer had been positioned several centimeters above the butcher and the saint.

“But it was taken by a Jew.… I’ll always know that.” Herr Immers turned and peered into the dark beyond the display window as if looking for new evidence to place in the leather briefcase that he’d started to carry with him wherever he went, even to chess club meetings. No one had seen the briefcase open, but people said that, inside, the butcher carried lists of people who’d said something against the Führer. Even his new daughter-in-law, Irmtraud, who’d resented the old man’s abrupt manner ever since she’d come to work in his shop as a fourteen-year-old, didn’t have a better explanation for what the butcher carried with him.

“… good likeness,” the pharmacist was saying.

“And that other Jew,” the butcher said, “she’d kick me out of here if she could.”

“What other Jew?” Herr Weskopp asked.

“The Frau Doktor’s daughter. Acting like she belongs here.… Planting lilacs in the backyard. Airs.…But I got myself a ten-year lease. With her husband. Before he married her.”

One Friday noon, when Trudi closed the pay-library and got herself on the way to the Buttgereits’ house to find out more about some rumors concerning the fat priest, she passed the crazy nun, Sister Adelheid, raking the paths between the flower beds inside the fenced cloister garden of the Theresienheim. Trudi greeted her and walked on, trying to decide what gossip she would trade with Frau Buttgereit
to obligate her to tell about the priest. According to the taxidermist’s wife, the fat priest’s housekeeper had complained about him to Frau Buttgereit.

“Wait, you,” the nun called. Her heart-shaped face was smudged.

Trudi stopped, letting her hand rest on the lower bar of the locked gate. Two huge plum trees poured their shadows across the sidewalk, leaving her and the sister in one stream of sun that fell on them like light in holy pictures.

“What is your name?” the sister asked, one foot tapping the ground.

“Trudi Montag.”

“I have seen you before. I am Sister Adelheid.”

“I know.”

“Do you also know that
der liebe Gott
—the dear God—has called you?” She pointed at Trudi, who tried to see if the sister really had the stigmata on her palms, but the nun’s hands were covered with soil.
“Der liebe Gott
wants you to be one of us. He has asked me to tell you.”

“I— I don’t think so. But thank you.”

On the clothes lines next to the building hung three rows of black habits, too wet to be stirred by the wind.

“Come. I want to show you something.”

“Where?”

“In my cell.”

Trudi had a vision of the sister kneeling in front of a wooden crate covered with white lace, raising circles of bread toward the ceiling. “I have to go,” she said, though she didn’t like leaving without at least some new information about the sister or about the convent wing that was closed to anyone except the nuns. She’d been inside the lobby and in the other wing of the Theresienheim, where the nuns took care of the ill and elderly, and where Sister Agathe had given her medicine for her cough last winter.

“When will you come back?”

Trudi hesitated. Maybe the gossip about the priest could wait. She asked what she would have never dared ask one of the other nuns. “What is it like inside the cloister?”

“Picky and petty and always the same.” The sister laughed and clapped her hands. “No, no, no—that is disrespectful.”

“But true?”

“True.”

“Is it also true that even the priests are not allowed in there?”

Sister Adelheid nodded. “No priests. No death. Sisters who get ready to die have to leave.”

“Where do they go?”

“Down the hall.”

“To the hospital?”

“The priest brings them their death.”

“You mean the last rites?”

“Yes, that. The priest can’t come into the cloister. Only one priest—” From the schoolyard next door came the sounds of playing children, and the sister lowered her voice. “Only one priest can go everywhere.”

“Who?”

Two widows pedaled their bicycles from the direction of the cemetery, black scarves tied around their hair, watering cans bobbing from the handlebars.

The sister beamed and straightened her back, adding to her substantial height. “I am a priest.”

“I see.”

“And it is my calling to tell you about your calling.”

“It’s not for me.”

“You will understand once you have seen my cell.”

“Do you still have communion wafers?”

“You’ll see. Come.”

“But I’m not a sister.”

“I give you special consent.”

“The gate is locked.”

Sister Adelheid shook the latch and frowned. “Climb across then,” she said impatiently.

“I—My legs … I’m not tall enough.”

“Then come through the lobby. Tell them—tell them you are visiting one of the old people. I am an old person. Look at my wrinkles. You are visiting me. So it becomes true. Not a sin, not a lie, no hell. You see? Go inside, then walk out through the backdoor into the garden. The others—they are always spying on me so that I—” She peered around as if suddenly aware she might be watched.