Read Online 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 - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Ursula Hegi
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and their fart smell drifted past us. Once, a door opened on the second floor, then closed with a thud. I sat three steps above Matthias, watching his long hands, his face, and it was as if we were talking, finding out things about each other though neither of us said a word, and somehow I knew he was filled with a light he would only let very few people see.
When he closed the jar of paste, he smiled at me. “I’m Matthias,” he said, and his voice was warm and low, just as I had imagined it.
“I’m Hanna.”
“Hanna,” he said as if trying out the name, matching it against me, as I sat on the stairs above him, at the same level with his gold-flecked eyes. “Do you like lemonade, Hanna?”
Matthias asked me to call him by his first name. He made lemonade for me that afternoon and opened a box of chocolate-covered hazelnuts.
“Don’t you want any?” I asked after I’d finished about half of them and felt a sweet-queasy sensation that would turn into a stomachache if I didn’t stop.
“I never eat them,” he said.
He was an orderly in the Theresienheim, the hospital run by the sisters on Römerstrasse where, twelve years before, Sister Ingeborg had pronounced me dead. When I told Matthias, he said he knew Sister Ingeborg—she’d hired him to work in the old people’s wing where, as the one male employee, it was his job to turn over those old people in their beds who were too heavy for the nuns.
In her pay-library Trudi Montag whispered to me that his other job was to bathe the old men. “To keep the nuns from going blind,” she said and laughed. “I heard he wasin a seminary in Kaiserslautern until two years ago.” She handed me two romance novels that belonged on a shelf too high for her to reach. “To become a priest.”
I reached up and jammed the books among equally colorful jackets. “Why did he leave?”
“Maybe he got kicked out.”
“Or maybe he just didn’t want to stay.”
Yet, I still had to ask him. The only priest I knew was Herr Pastor Beier, who celebrated mass every Sunday and heard confessions on Saturday. The day of my first communion he had told me and the other children as we knelt there—the girls in white dresses, the boys in blue suits—that this was the happiest day of our lives. I’d clutched the lace handkerchief my mother had wrapped around the stem of my communion candle, waiting for that promised happiness to take hold of me, but all I’d felt was a curious sense of letdown.
“Did you want to become a priest?” I asked Matthias.
“Who told you this?” He sat at his piano, playing a rapid sequence of notes I had never heard.
“Trudi Montag. She heard it—”
“—from someone else who heard it from someone else…” He smiled. His hands kept gliding across the ivory keys. Then he closed his eyes as if trying to remember or—perhaps—forget something. Softly, like someone who’d been in pain for a long time, he said, “It became apparent that I wasn’t chosen.”
Above his window hung a wooden crucifix. Nails were hammered through Jesus’s palms. His right foot rested above the left so that one nail could connect both feet to the cross. Ribs showed above the carved lines of the cloth he wore tied around his waist. The wood on top of his outstretched arms and in the hollows between his ribs looked lighter where dust had dulled the dark sheen of the wood.
Though Matthias was in his late twenties, his rooms held the smell of old skin, as though he had carried it home fromthe Theresienheim in his hair and on the soles of his shoes. I’d recognize his steps on the hallway stairs and wait a few minutes before rushing upstairs to knock on his door.
He always seemed glad to see me. His apartment was half dark as if the sun hurt his eyes—so different from my mother’s studio next door, one huge room flooded with light. Once she’d invited Matthias to see her work, and he’d stood for a long time in front of one of her pictures of the Rhein,
When he closed the jar of paste, he smiled at me. “I’m Matthias,” he said, and his voice was warm and low, just as I had imagined it.
“I’m Hanna.”
“Hanna,” he said as if trying out the name, matching it against me, as I sat on the stairs above him, at the same level with his gold-flecked eyes. “Do you like lemonade, Hanna?”
Matthias asked me to call him by his first name. He made lemonade for me that afternoon and opened a box of chocolate-covered hazelnuts.
“Don’t you want any?” I asked after I’d finished about half of them and felt a sweet-queasy sensation that would turn into a stomachache if I didn’t stop.
“I never eat them,” he said.
He was an orderly in the Theresienheim, the hospital run by the sisters on Römerstrasse where, twelve years before, Sister Ingeborg had pronounced me dead. When I told Matthias, he said he knew Sister Ingeborg—she’d hired him to work in the old people’s wing where, as the one male employee, it was his job to turn over those old people in their beds who were too heavy for the nuns.
In her pay-library Trudi Montag whispered to me that his other job was to bathe the old men. “To keep the nuns from going blind,” she said and laughed. “I heard he wasin a seminary in Kaiserslautern until two years ago.” She handed me two romance novels that belonged on a shelf too high for her to reach. “To become a priest.”
I reached up and jammed the books among equally colorful jackets. “Why did he leave?”
“Maybe he got kicked out.”
“Or maybe he just didn’t want to stay.”
Yet, I still had to ask him. The only priest I knew was Herr Pastor Beier, who celebrated mass every Sunday and heard confessions on Saturday. The day of my first communion he had told me and the other children as we knelt there—the girls in white dresses, the boys in blue suits—that this was the happiest day of our lives. I’d clutched the lace handkerchief my mother had wrapped around the stem of my communion candle, waiting for that promised happiness to take hold of me, but all I’d felt was a curious sense of letdown.
“Did you want to become a priest?” I asked Matthias.
“Who told you this?” He sat at his piano, playing a rapid sequence of notes I had never heard.
“Trudi Montag. She heard it—”
“—from someone else who heard it from someone else…” He smiled. His hands kept gliding across the ivory keys. Then he closed his eyes as if trying to remember or—perhaps—forget something. Softly, like someone who’d been in pain for a long time, he said, “It became apparent that I wasn’t chosen.”
Above his window hung a wooden crucifix. Nails were hammered through Jesus’s palms. His right foot rested above the left so that one nail could connect both feet to the cross. Ribs showed above the carved lines of the cloth he wore tied around his waist. The wood on top of his outstretched arms and in the hollows between his ribs looked lighter where dust had dulled the dark sheen of the wood.
Though Matthias was in his late twenties, his rooms held the smell of old skin, as though he had carried it home fromthe Theresienheim in his hair and on the soles of his shoes. I’d recognize his steps on the hallway stairs and wait a few minutes before rushing upstairs to knock on his door.
He always seemed glad to see me. His apartment was half dark as if the sun hurt his eyes—so different from my mother’s studio next door, one huge room flooded with light. Once she’d invited Matthias to see her work, and he’d stood for a long time in front of one of her pictures of the Rhein,
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