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 by Ursula Hegi Page A
Authors: Ursula Hegi
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moment.
And what my father had to do now was know his son in this new, silent form. Remember his changed face, longer somehow and solemn, his still hands. Remember him like this to carry himself and my mother through mourning.
The day I almost got caught stealing flowers for Joachim, I took the vase with the sharp point at its bottom from behind our headstone and walked over to the nearest faucet. All of the graves were covered with flowers and bushes. Impatiens and geraniums, fuchsias and rhododendrons, lilies and roses thickened the air with a lavish scent that slowed down the wing beats of the birds that lived in the cemetery. Noisy and secure, hundreds of them perched on headstones and nested in the lush hedges as if they knew that this was a safe place where cats and children wouldn’t chase them. Often I heard them long before I reached the gate, long before the familiar scent reached for me.
On several graves were lanterns with short, thick candles. Headstones listed the names of people in the order in which they’d died, most of them old, some of them children who had died too young. Like Joachim. Whose name was the last on our headstone.
Frau Weskopp stood at the faucet in her black coat, holding her watering can beneath the spout. It was easy to tell who the widows were: they spent many hours at the cemetery, tending the family graves; they wore black for many years; they arrived on their bicycles with watering cans hanging from their handlebars; they wore thick nylons and shoes with stocky heels; they carried rolled-up umbrellas in case it rained; they sat on benches with other widows, talking while gazing over the rows of graves.
Frau Weskopp turned off the faucet and stepped aside. Deep lines ran across her cheeks and forehead. She had the face of someone who knew how to grieve. “Visiting your brother?” she asked.
I nodded and filled our vase with water.
She glanced up toward the scattered clouds. “Better not stay too long. We may get a storm this afternoon.”
At least three times she had told me how lucky my brother was that Herr Pastor Beier had christened him so soon after he was born. “Otherwise he’d be in purgatory.”
Her husband and both sons had fought on the Russian front and had died the same year. Their names were engraved not only on the headstone but also in the last column of the tall war monument at the entrance to the cemetery.
As I knelt on my brother’s grave and wedged the sharp point of the vase into the dirt, I imagined my mother holding Joachim, imagined her as I had so often, my father holding both of them, rocking, my brother wrapped in a white blanket that covered him from his feet to his shoulders, his head lying securely in the bend of my mother’s left arm, her right hand resting on his chest.
I got my eyes to fill with tears by letting them go out of focus and staring straight ahead until they burned, but when I tried to blink out a tear, my eyes dried right away.
Except for the birds, it was quiet in the cemetery. I sat back on my heels and wiped my hands on my skirt. On my thumb was a cut; I pressed against it, but even that didn’t bring on tears. The cut was from stealing garden doors. Stealing wasn’t actually the right word. Late the night before, I’d sneaked out to meet Rolf Brocker and Karin Baum. The three of us had started out behind Anton Immers’s house, and whenever we got to a garden door, we’d lift it from its hinges and drag it around the next corner, where we’d leave it leaning against a tree or fence. Some of those gates were heavy; one of them fell on Karin’s foot and another cut my thumb, but the three of us managed to carry them. This morning people all over Burgdorf had been searching for their garden doors.
I brushed the dirt from my bare knees and walked to where our lane intersected with the main path. No one was there. The air was moist, warm. A bouquet of daisies stood next to the headstone of Trudi Montag’s father. I
And what my father had to do now was know his son in this new, silent form. Remember his changed face, longer somehow and solemn, his still hands. Remember him like this to carry himself and my mother through mourning.
The day I almost got caught stealing flowers for Joachim, I took the vase with the sharp point at its bottom from behind our headstone and walked over to the nearest faucet. All of the graves were covered with flowers and bushes. Impatiens and geraniums, fuchsias and rhododendrons, lilies and roses thickened the air with a lavish scent that slowed down the wing beats of the birds that lived in the cemetery. Noisy and secure, hundreds of them perched on headstones and nested in the lush hedges as if they knew that this was a safe place where cats and children wouldn’t chase them. Often I heard them long before I reached the gate, long before the familiar scent reached for me.
On several graves were lanterns with short, thick candles. Headstones listed the names of people in the order in which they’d died, most of them old, some of them children who had died too young. Like Joachim. Whose name was the last on our headstone.
Frau Weskopp stood at the faucet in her black coat, holding her watering can beneath the spout. It was easy to tell who the widows were: they spent many hours at the cemetery, tending the family graves; they wore black for many years; they arrived on their bicycles with watering cans hanging from their handlebars; they wore thick nylons and shoes with stocky heels; they carried rolled-up umbrellas in case it rained; they sat on benches with other widows, talking while gazing over the rows of graves.
Frau Weskopp turned off the faucet and stepped aside. Deep lines ran across her cheeks and forehead. She had the face of someone who knew how to grieve. “Visiting your brother?” she asked.
I nodded and filled our vase with water.
She glanced up toward the scattered clouds. “Better not stay too long. We may get a storm this afternoon.”
At least three times she had told me how lucky my brother was that Herr Pastor Beier had christened him so soon after he was born. “Otherwise he’d be in purgatory.”
Her husband and both sons had fought on the Russian front and had died the same year. Their names were engraved not only on the headstone but also in the last column of the tall war monument at the entrance to the cemetery.
As I knelt on my brother’s grave and wedged the sharp point of the vase into the dirt, I imagined my mother holding Joachim, imagined her as I had so often, my father holding both of them, rocking, my brother wrapped in a white blanket that covered him from his feet to his shoulders, his head lying securely in the bend of my mother’s left arm, her right hand resting on his chest.
I got my eyes to fill with tears by letting them go out of focus and staring straight ahead until they burned, but when I tried to blink out a tear, my eyes dried right away.
Except for the birds, it was quiet in the cemetery. I sat back on my heels and wiped my hands on my skirt. On my thumb was a cut; I pressed against it, but even that didn’t bring on tears. The cut was from stealing garden doors. Stealing wasn’t actually the right word. Late the night before, I’d sneaked out to meet Rolf Brocker and Karin Baum. The three of us had started out behind Anton Immers’s house, and whenever we got to a garden door, we’d lift it from its hinges and drag it around the next corner, where we’d leave it leaning against a tree or fence. Some of those gates were heavy; one of them fell on Karin’s foot and another cut my thumb, but the three of us managed to carry them. This morning people all over Burgdorf had been searching for their garden doors.
I brushed the dirt from my bare knees and walked to where our lane intersected with the main path. No one was there. The air was moist, warm. A bouquet of daisies stood next to the headstone of Trudi Montag’s father. I
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