top of the dike.
“We didn’t even hear a splash,” the taxidermist kept telling Frau Weiler. “Franz simply disappeared.” When he tried to offer her his help, she sent him home.
Trudi heard several people tell her father that Frau Weiler insisted her husband must have slipped from the dike on his way to morning mass.
“Morning mass, my ass,” Herr Immers said.
“He ordered the last round for us at Potter’s,” the pharmacist said.
Frau Blau pointed out that the church was only two blocks from the Weilers’ and the river a good ten minutes’ walk beyond the church.
“Must be some new detour,” Herr Bilder said.
Yet, no one contradicted Frau Weiler but—as it had been the habit of generations—upheld the façade which, above all, preserved a family’s respectability, no matter that beneath that façade all kinds of gossip festered. It was a complicity of silence that had served the town for centuries. Dressed in black and bearing proper words of condolence, the people assembled for the church service held in Franz Weiler’s memory: the men from his
Stammtisch;
the families who had bought their groceries from him and his wife for many years; a group of nuns from the Theresienheim who had their own chapel yet rarely missed a funeral service at St. Martin’s; and the bereaved wife, of course, with her possibly half-orphaned son, Georg, who wore ablack smock that had been hastily fashioned from one of her blouses.
He knelt next to Trudi and whispered to her during communion—which the two children were too young to receive—that his father was just taking a long swim. If any of the men from Franz Weiler’s
Stammtisch
had overheard the boy, they would have agreed with Georg: they already had speculated that, once in the river, Franz had kept on swimming to get away from his iron-haired wife.
When the people left the church, the man-who-touches-his-heart stood on the wet steps without a hat or umbrella. He was one of the few who always looked straight at Trudi.
See
, he seemed to say as his hands roamed up and down.
See what I can do
. Most grown-ups didn’t look right at Trudi: they acted as if she were invisible and said things they would never say around other children. She found if she stayed very quiet they often kept talking, disclosing far more about themselves than they realized—even those who had trained their features to remain constant. The feelings they tried to hide sprang into their voices, and she could discern fear, joy, impatience, rage. When they got cautious, a certain flatness moved into their speech, and their sentences shrank; but when they became excited, their words grew colorful and rushed from them.
If she didn’t remind people that she was there, she got to listen to all kinds of secrets. They fascinated her, those secrets, and she hoarded them, repeating them to herself before she went to sleep, feeling them stretch and grow into stories—like the one about Frau Buttgereit kneeling on lentils each morning when she prayed to St. Ottilia, the patroness of the blind, after whom she’d been named, imploring her to make sure her next child would not be another daughter. Trudi found it hard to believe that the gaunt woman, whose stomach always looked distended, had the reputation of once having been the most beautiful girl in Burgdorf.
Then there was the story about Herr Hesping, who’d bought a thousand blankets from one branch of the military and, within a week, had resold them to another branch for twice the price. He was often involved in some kind of deal that stretched the boundaries of the law without crossing them. If you asked him about a particular transaction, he’d overwhelm you with such a mass of facts and logic that you were glad once he stopped explaining. Some people said he had no values; others maintained that he did whatever he did out of contempt for the government.
• • •
The flood of 1920 that claimed Georg’s father was not the
“We didn’t even hear a splash,” the taxidermist kept telling Frau Weiler. “Franz simply disappeared.” When he tried to offer her his help, she sent him home.
Trudi heard several people tell her father that Frau Weiler insisted her husband must have slipped from the dike on his way to morning mass.
“Morning mass, my ass,” Herr Immers said.
“He ordered the last round for us at Potter’s,” the pharmacist said.
Frau Blau pointed out that the church was only two blocks from the Weilers’ and the river a good ten minutes’ walk beyond the church.
“Must be some new detour,” Herr Bilder said.
Yet, no one contradicted Frau Weiler but—as it had been the habit of generations—upheld the façade which, above all, preserved a family’s respectability, no matter that beneath that façade all kinds of gossip festered. It was a complicity of silence that had served the town for centuries. Dressed in black and bearing proper words of condolence, the people assembled for the church service held in Franz Weiler’s memory: the men from his
Stammtisch;
the families who had bought their groceries from him and his wife for many years; a group of nuns from the Theresienheim who had their own chapel yet rarely missed a funeral service at St. Martin’s; and the bereaved wife, of course, with her possibly half-orphaned son, Georg, who wore ablack smock that had been hastily fashioned from one of her blouses.
He knelt next to Trudi and whispered to her during communion—which the two children were too young to receive—that his father was just taking a long swim. If any of the men from Franz Weiler’s
Stammtisch
had overheard the boy, they would have agreed with Georg: they already had speculated that, once in the river, Franz had kept on swimming to get away from his iron-haired wife.
When the people left the church, the man-who-touches-his-heart stood on the wet steps without a hat or umbrella. He was one of the few who always looked straight at Trudi.
See
, he seemed to say as his hands roamed up and down.
See what I can do
. Most grown-ups didn’t look right at Trudi: they acted as if she were invisible and said things they would never say around other children. She found if she stayed very quiet they often kept talking, disclosing far more about themselves than they realized—even those who had trained their features to remain constant. The feelings they tried to hide sprang into their voices, and she could discern fear, joy, impatience, rage. When they got cautious, a certain flatness moved into their speech, and their sentences shrank; but when they became excited, their words grew colorful and rushed from them.
If she didn’t remind people that she was there, she got to listen to all kinds of secrets. They fascinated her, those secrets, and she hoarded them, repeating them to herself before she went to sleep, feeling them stretch and grow into stories—like the one about Frau Buttgereit kneeling on lentils each morning when she prayed to St. Ottilia, the patroness of the blind, after whom she’d been named, imploring her to make sure her next child would not be another daughter. Trudi found it hard to believe that the gaunt woman, whose stomach always looked distended, had the reputation of once having been the most beautiful girl in Burgdorf.
Then there was the story about Herr Hesping, who’d bought a thousand blankets from one branch of the military and, within a week, had resold them to another branch for twice the price. He was often involved in some kind of deal that stretched the boundaries of the law without crossing them. If you asked him about a particular transaction, he’d overwhelm you with such a mass of facts and logic that you were glad once he stopped explaining. Some people said he had no values; others maintained that he did whatever he did out of contempt for the government.
• • •
The flood of 1920 that claimed Georg’s father was not the
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