Almost Everything Very Fast (15 page)

“I’m sorry, bird,” said Fred, and crossed himself before the grave.

Albert shut his eyes.

Fred smiled. “You can talk the way people sing.”

“That’s by Nietzsche.”

“Is he one of your friends?”

“Sometimes.”

Albert thought about the time Alfonsa had first read to him from
Beyond Good and Evil.
It was the day the dart had pierced his cheek. Albert had lain in the Saint Helena infirmary, the left half of his face swaddled in bandages, the taste of iodine in his mouth. The slightest blink or movement of his lips had sent stabbing pains through his head. When Alfonsa stepped into his room, he’d assumed she was planning to punish him with the shoelaces again. But she passed over the episode without a word, and instead sat down beside the bed, opened the volume of Nietzsche, and started to read. Albert’s six-year-old mind had glided over every third word, but Alfonsa’s emotionless voice had soothed him and given him the feeling that his wound was just an insignificant injury, something that would soon be healed.

Now, standing with Fred beside the tiny grave, this memory sparked such a need for comfort in him that he immediately walked into the house and called Alfonsa. It was only when she answered with a cool “Yes?” that it occurred to him that he hadn’t spoken to her since leaving for Königsdorf.

“It’s me.”

“Albert.” Was he wrong, or was there a faint trace of pleasure in her voice?

They were silent.

“I wanted to call you,” he said finally.

“I figured that much.”

Somehow, he’d imagined this differently. How was he supposed to tell someone who’d never been all that good at hugging that he wanted to wrap his arms around her? And what’s more, to tell her over the telephone?

“We buried a robin today,” said Albert.

“An exciting day, then,” said Alfonsa. “Anything else?”

“Fred only has ninety thousand minutes left.”

“You know what I think about that.” That he and Fred would be in better hands at Saint Helena. Before Albert had left, she’d taken every possible opportunity to make that clear to him. Which had only strengthened his conviction that he and Fred had to spend their remaining time in Königsdorf. At Saint Helena he would be forced to share Fred with nuns and orphans, at Saint Helena Fred wouldn’t be able to go through his usual daily routine, at Saint Helena Albert would never have learned about the gold, about the chest in the sewers, and about Britta Grolmann.

“You’re calling because it isn’t working out,” she said. “Think it over.”

“I have,” he said. “We’ll manage.”

At that moment, Fred stepped into the living room and looked at him, puzzled. Albert almost never used the telephone (his conversation with Britta Grolmann had been an exception, one he’d kept secret from Fred), and people rarely called them, mostly telemarketers, whom Fred jabbered at so interminably that they were glad to hang up. Fred asked him whom he was talking to, so loudly that Albert couldn’t understand what Alfonsa said to him next, and he would have entirely missed those words that he’d never be able to forget, if Alfonsa hadn’t cleared her throat and repeated, “I could show you who your mother is.”

Between 1525 and 1924, seventeen houses in Segendorf burned to the ground. But most of them not in the sacrificial bonfire. My parents’ house was number eighteen. All the hamlet’s inhabitants formed a chain from the Moorbach to the village center, passing buckets of water along as fast as they could, though, admittedly, they concentrated their collective effort on the neighboring houses, to prevent the conflagration from spreading.

Everyone agreed that a flying spark must have been responsible for the blaze.

No one had seen how, before I’d fled, I’d torn the torch away from Anni and hurled it into the burning house, how I’d taken her face in my hands and looked her in the eyes and said, “I love you.”

Up on Wolf Hill, I curled up against the side of the oak that faced away from Segendorf and wept. I drew in my legs, pressed my knees against my chest, wrapped my arms around them, and buried my face there. I wanted to make myself as small as possible, so that nobody would be able to find me, and I thought, if I make an effort, then maybe I can crawl inside myself, and reach someplace better. I stayed there till late in the night, scratching at my wound and spelling out one word after another:
H-o-t, b-l-a-z-e, f-i-r-e, d-e-v-o-u-r, s-m-o-k-e, J-o-s-f-e-r, J-a-s-f-e, J-o-s-f-e-r …

It didn’t help much.

The west wind carried smoke and ash my way. I fell asleep with my index fingers plugging my nostrils.

During the night, I found myself wandering through a burning house. I knew I was dreaming, there was no noise at all, the ceiling fell in, the chimney exploded—yet none of this disturbed the silence. I strode calmly from room to room, and finally reached my own. Heading for bed, I laid myself down between my parents, and drew up the covers.

“I love you,” I said to them, surprised that they were alive, and what’s more, that they didn’t answer.

“I love you,” I repeated.

My parents snored.

“ILOVEYOUILOVEYOUILOVEYOU!”

Someone or other prodded me. I shot up, grabbing at something smooth, sleek, and redolent of leather, and saw a girl whose polished boots rose past her knees.

“You’re Julius Habom,” she said. “That’s you, isn’t it?”

Mina Reindl was my age, but at least a head taller than me. Her hair shimmered, now gray, now blond, her tanned skin made you think of lacquered wood, and as she stood there inspecting me, she didn’t blink once. Typical Klöble. A few months before, her father had fallen victim to a rabid fox. Since then, the rumor had gone around that her mother, the master baker, had developed a weakness for an undertaker from out of town—certain nocturnal screams supposedly proved it.

Mina stamped her foot—I still had hold of her leg.

“I like it when you grab my leg,” she said. “You can grab my head, too. If you want.”

I let go.

“I hold my own legs, too, sometimes. But you hold them much better. You have beautiful eyes. Did you sleep up here? There are rabid bears out here, and wolves, and …”

“Foxes.”

“Yes, exactly!” She gave me an amiable smile, and that made me relax a bit. My stomach growled.

“Why are you making that noise?”

I shrugged. “You smell like bread.”

A short time later, I was munching on rolls with bacon in them. Mina had smuggled them out of the bakery.

“Come with me. We’ll look for your sister,” said Mina.

“No, I’m never going back there.”

“But I’m not bringing you rolls every day. That’s bad for business.”

“I don’t need you.”

“But you mustn’t starve. You have beautiful eyes. Take another roll. And then we’ll look for your sister. She has wavy hair.”

“I’m staying here.”

Mina fiddled a toothpick between her rotten black teeth. Thanks to all the poppy-seed pastries in Segendorf, Carpenter Huber did a brisk trade in toothpicks of all sizes.

“I have to go home. Or else my mother will get mad. She’s the master baker. And a widow!”

“I know.”

“Did you know that she likes the Wickenhäuser?”

“Wickenhäuser?”

“A Wickenhäuser is a mortician.” Mina pricked herself in the gums. “Agh! I’m not allowed to tell about that. Now you’re not allowed to tell about it either, okay?”

“That depends.”

“Depends on what? I’m not bringing any more rolls. That’s bad for business.”

“Do you think you could bring your mother up here?”

“Only if you hold my leg again.”

Mina stretched out her left leg, and I wrapped both arms around it.

“Do you like my boots? The pretty leather came from Hunter Josfer.”

I didn’t let go. I didn’t let go, but clung tighter, closed my eyes, nestled my cheek against the leather, and inhaled deeply.

“You do that really well,” said Mina. Then she went back to the village.

As the hours went by, the oak’s shadow moved on Wolf Hill like the hand of a clock. I peered at the village over the top of the hill, afraid that Mina’s mother might have betrayed my hiding place to the mayor, or, much worse, to Pastor Meier.

Nobody came. In the evening the sun was swallowed by the moor, and thinking Mina had forgotten me, I curled myself up again and was attempting to recall what my father had told me about the edibility of moss, when someone called: “Habom! We’re coming!”

Mina ran toward me. A wheezing figure, tall for a woman but svelte for a master baker, followed, leaning for a moment on the oak’s trunk to gasp for air and throwing Mina a reproachful look. “I told you: quietly!”

“But Mama, he has to know that we’re coming.”

Master Baker Reindl was out of breath, but her appearance was even more impressive now that she was out from behind her counter. “I know someone,” she said, “who has work for you.”

“I learn fast,” I said, truthfully.

“How old are you?”

“Eleven.”

“You’d have to leave this place.”

“Good.”

“And your sister?”

I hadn’t thought about that. “Can’t she come, too?”

The master baker shook her head. “She wouldn’t make it.”

“I can help her.”

“You’re going to have to help yourself. So: you’re sure you want to go away?”

Dead certain, I wanted to say, but only nodded my head.

“A friend will pick you up tomorrow.”

Maybe, I thought, I could convince this friend to take Anni and me together.

“The Wickenhäuser is visiting,” whispered Mina.

“Shh,” went her mother. “He still owes me a favor.”

Mina giggled. “She’s always helping him explode.”

“Keep quiet! What have I told you?”

Mina rolled her eyes, and said: “The bedroom is taboo. You sleep in the bedroom, you hear what’s happening in the bedroom, but you
neeee
ver talk about the bedroom.”

“Do you know how Anni’s doing?” I asked.

“Someone will take care of her.” Mina’s mother stroked her gray-blond hair. “Come on, let’s get going.”

“And Habom?” Mina said.

“What?”

“The foxes. The wolves! And the bears.”

“There aren’t any wolves or bears here.”

“But foxes.”

“Mina!” said her mother.

“It’s fine,” I explained to Mina. “I like being alone.” And though I’d told her the truth, that evening it was a lie. As they were leaving I hugged Mina’s leg one last time, and when they’d already walked off a ways, I called after them: “Why?”

The master baker lifted her arms, palms upward.

“Why are you helping me?”

She pointed at Segendorf behind her with her thumb. “I know a certain master baker who, when she was young, always wanted to get away from this muckhole.”

“You can come, too.”

“No,” she pressed her daughter against her with her long, brawny arms, “Mina likes it here. Someone like Mina wouldn’t like it anywhere else.” Then they tramped down Wolf Hill together. With every step they took away from me, the sound of Mina’s prattle grew softer and softer. “WhatsamuckholeWhatsamuckholeWhatsamuckhole?”

I ran a hand through my hair, and ashes fluttered from my head. I ran to the Moorbach, slipped out of my clothes, leapt into the ice-cold water, and dunked myself again and again, scrubbing my skin with a piece of slate until it turned bright red. Jasfe and Josfer were in the air now, their dust pollinated the poppies, danced in the highest treetops, it was captured by spiderwebs, seeped into the earth, flew through the airways of the Segendorfers, penetrated their very lungs.