Almost Everything Very Fast (24 page)

When winter came, our burned-out house, surrounded by snow, looked like a black-and-white photograph. She went there looking for something, without knowing what. Something pretty, small, familiar, something to press against her breast and cherish. She poked a stick through the mound of ashes, whipped it at rats, wrote
Mama
and
Papa
and
Julius
with it in the soot. On each of these forays she pocketed something. A collection of Most Beloved Possessions accumulated in a basket under her bed, which she guarded like treasure: hairpins melted into one another, a stove tile broken in fifths, the spine from the cookbook, two smooth, gleaming candlesticks, a dagger, a handful of nails, arrowheads, teeth, and much more. A dirty black film covered everything, which Anni couldn’t get rid of, no matter how much she scrubbed each object in the cold water of the Moorbach. And whenever a somebody suggested she choose one of them for the Sacrificial Festival, she just shook her head and said, “It’s already been burned.”

One of her chores was to go and fetch rolls from the bakery every Sunday. If Reindl’s daughter was at the shop, the two of them would swap Most Beloved Possessions. Sometimes Mina would roam through the burned house as well, hunting rats and stuffing her pockets with whatever junk was lying around. In her company it was rare for Anni to shake her head, because, like many Klöbles, Mina treated her no differently than she had before the fire.

All the other people of Segendorf had changed. No matter whom she met, even people she didn’t actually know, they would greet her, ask her how she was doing, praise her new home, invite her for a slice of poppy-seed cake, or slip her an apple.

One day, while trading Most Beloved Possessions, Mina’s polished boots caught her eye, and she couldn’t resist the temptation to touch them.

“Do you like them?” asked Mina. “You can hug my leg, too, if you want. The leather came from Hunter Josfer.”

“Where did you find them?”

“They’re mine.”

“What will you trade for them?” Anni spread some of her Most Beloved Possessions before them. “You can take whatever you want.”

“Whatever I want?” Mina’s eyes glittered, she bent down, biting her lip and reaching for the dagger—then drew back, folded her arms. “No. These are my favorite boots.”

“Please, let’s trade.”

“No.”

“I’ll tell you something.”

“What?”

“My secret.”

“Like Farmer Egler’s?” said Mina. “Then I don’t want to know it.”

“No. A real secret.”

“Maybe I already know it. You have to tell me first.” A moment ago Mina’s hair had been gray, but now it shimmered blond, as if the sun shone on it.

“But you can’t tell anyone else,” whispered Anni, glancing back at the door to make sure they were alone. “Nobody!”

Mina nodded eagerly.

Anni held one hand in front of her lips and leaned forward: “Sometimes I wake up. Late at night. And then I have this feeling, as if …”

“What?”

“As if Julius is thinking about me.”

“Julius Habom!” gasped Mina.

“‘That’s impossible,’ I say out loud to myself, ‘he’s—’”

“Anni!” Master Baker Reindl interrupted them, shoving her long, lean body between Anni and her daughter. “Your rolls are getting cold.”

Anni nodded, silently gathered her things, and set off. Back at the somebodies’ house she put the rolls in the breadbasket, covered them with a kitchen towel, went to her room, pressed her face deep into the pillow, and screamed: “He’s burned, he’s burned, he’s burned!” Afterward she felt a bit better, washed herself, and went to milk the cows, shaking her head. She tried a few more times to get her hands on the leather boots her father had made, but had to concede that it was as good as impossible to separate a Klöble from something she liked. And Mina loved her boots.

As the years wore on, the attention people paid to Anni didn’t dwindle half as much as Anni did herself. She ate now only when her stomach ached or her fainting spells increased—a swig of milk fresh from the udder for breakfast, and half an apple at lunch. When evening came she was often too tired to chew.

Her cheekbones stood out, throwing shadows across her face, and her curls hung slack from her scalp as if exhausted. She could assist with the milking for only an hour or so before black filled her vision, and her arms were so thin one of the somebodies would have to help her lug the milk pail. On her excursions to our former house she was seized with fits of convulsive coughing, so she could seldom enlarge her collection of Most Beloved Possessions. Women beckoned to her, called her over to them, invited her inside; Master Baker Reindl gave her bacon rolls with cheese crusts, the innkeeper foisted jars of sweet rose-hip marmalade on her, and Farmer Obermüller’s widow let her sample her viscous cake batter. Not even the most persistent head-shaking could repel them. It was scarcely more effective at repelling people’s looks.

Sometimes, washing herself in the Moorbach, she found herself breaking out in goose bumps, even though she wasn’t cold, and then she’d glance around and notice half a dozen boys stretched out in the riverside pasture, chewing grass stems and staring at her. Mina explained that it was Anni’s own fault, she’d reached the age when one started to bleed. Shrugged shoulders greeted every question Anni asked: Where, why, when—and who was
one?

It was only after months passed without a single drop of blood that her worries evaporated. After all, Anni told herself, Mina’s just a Klöble.

One rainy autumn evening Anni sat atop Wolf Hill beneath the shelter of the oak, running a comb carved from a stag antler through her hair. The moor steamed in the distance. Now and then she ran her fingertips across the
I love you
carved into the tree’s meandering root overgrown with moss. She liked touching it, this root; she was proud that, apart from Pastor Meier, she was the only person in the whole village who could decipher the letters.

“Aren’t you cold?” came a husky voice. A boy leapt down from the oak’s branches and landed beside her with a somersault. Right away Anni’s heart was beating harder, she did her best not to increase the pace of her combing, and she said, “How long have you been hiding?”

“I could smell your hair. Even from up there.”

At first glance Markus looked slight for his age, he was barely bigger than Anni, yet he’d herded many a fat swine for his father to Butcher Scherfeil; there was plenty of strength in his arms and legs.

“I have to go,” said Anni.

“Just talk with me a little.”

Anni shook her head. She noticed that Markus was handling his words differently than he used to.

“You never play with anyone. Why not? Are you scared?”

“I have to work.”

“You don’t have to work now.”

Anni stood without looking at him, tied back her hair, and moved calmly away from him, which wasn’t so easy. Her legs wanted to run.

“I love you,” called Markus.

Anni stopped short.

“I love you,” he repeated. “That’s what it says there, right?”

She turned back to him.

“Did you carve it?” he asked.

“No!” she shouted. And then softer: “You?”

“Me!” He laughed. “You Haboms, you’ve always had books.”

Anni stepped from one foot to the other. “Then how do you know what’s carved there?”

“You aren’t the only ones who can learn to read.”

“Who helped you? The pastor?”

“You’d like to know that, wouldn’t you?”

“Tell me already, who?”

Markus gnawed at one of his black fingernails. “Let me smell your hair. Then I’ll tell you.”

Anni balled her hands into fists, the comb’s teeth bit into her flesh. “But only for a moment.”

Markus came over and stuck his nose into her mop of hair. Goose bumps broke out across Anni’s back.

“That’s enough.”

“Why?” His husky voice was now very close to her ear, almost inside her head, he tugged at her violet dress, his breath grazed her throat. One of her hands was shut tight around the comb, with the other she clutched Markus’s shirt. “You smell good,” he said, and shoved a hand under her skirt.

A tingling ran through her skin and wandered into her belly. “Don’t do that,” she said. Markus pulled her to the ground. The grass was damp, it prickled and stroked her as if it were alive. Raindrops slipped across her brow, she opened her eyes—when had she shut them?—saw her hand on Markus’s face, her fingers in his mouth, felt the soft, warm wetness of his tongue and lips, the way his fingernails brushed her leg. Lightning split the sky, and she tore herself loose, slashing with her comb at his many hands and words, ran away, slipped, tumbled over, went rolling down the hill, got to her feet again, ran stumbling on, and reached our old home. She threw herself down on a heap of soot in a dry corner, wanting to disappear.

She swore to herself she’d never touch another piece of soap, that she’d shun water from then on, be it rain, the Moorbach, or the weekly hot bath. She wanted to be more than merely dirty, since everybody in Segendorf was dirty already—to be precise, in Segendorf dirty was considered relatively clean. Anni wanted to look filthier than Butcher Scherfeil after a day at the slaughterhouse, wanted her mouth to stink even more than Blacksmith Schwaiger’s. Then nobody would stare at her anymore. Or try to feed her goodies. Or smell her hair and grope around under her skirt.

After four days without washing, the stink of her lap was coming through her clothes. The day after that, one of the somebodies laid fresh underwear on her bed. Another two days and she bit a tiny piece of skin, which tasted like chicken, from the upper arm of a somebody who’d attempted to wrestle her into the bathtub. Three more days of house arrest, and she could smell herself even when she leaned over the hole in the latrine. Early on the morning of the eleventh day, Anni was allowed to leave the house to fetch water from the Moorbach. While filling the bucket she took care not to dampen her hands. On the way home Markus approached her, a sledgehammer over his shoulder. When he saw her he stopped short, just in front of the shadow thrown by her body across the meadow (and the sun was still very low in the sky). Anni smiled, satisfied, and took a step in his direction. Would he shrink away from her? Her shadow head swallowed his foot. Markus didn’t stir, but still, Anni could see how his chest rose and fell. He turned around, as if about to leave. Anni’s smile expanded into a grin, at which point Markus let the sledgehammer fall, leapt at her, and threw her to the ground. His hot face pressed against hers.

“Whatareyoudoingwhatisthiswhathaveyoudone?” Markus’s hands plunged into her hair, his nose buried itself in her armpit. She beat at him, searched with both hands for anything within reach, anything she could use to hurt him, tore up grass, reached again, more grass, then felt something similar, but thinner, denser, more firmly rooted, which she pulled with all her strength, because she knew her life depended on it, and if only she pulled hard enough she’d be able to make everything that had gone wrong, everything bad, false, evil, make all of it right again, with a single jerk.

Markus tumbled away from her, clutching his head. His crying sounded like breathy, voiceless coughing. In her right hand Anni held a thick clump of his hair. She dropped it, and wiped her hand on her skirt. His howling was mixed with incomprehensible words and grunts. Anni stood, knocking the grass from her no-longer-so-violet dress. Markus was rolling back and forth, she couldn’t look away, there was no trace at all of the Markus she’d been afraid of. It was only a little boy who lay crumpled there in her long shadow’s belly, a little boy over whose cheeks ran an endless stream of tears. She might have yelled, “You deserved that!” and “Never touch me again!” and “Repent!”—but not a word passed her lips.

Anni positioned herself in front of Markus, prodded him with her foot to be sure he saw her, and shook her head; then she picked up her bucket and, the sun at her back, followed her shadow homeward.

From then on, Anni washed herself three times a day, with water and soap, thoroughly, including the place that little girls—as one of the somebodies had drummed into her—should never touch. As soon as the curly hair that proliferated wildly on her body, and in which a strangely powerful but not unpleasant odor had taken root, grew long enough that the pale skin beneath barely shimmered through, she trimmed it back. Smells, she realized, were all the stronger in places where they could conceal themselves: in hair, under the arms, between the legs, under finger-and toenails, in folds and crevices of skin. Stubborn as they were, Anni tracked them down and dislodged them with the aid of scissors, damp cloths, her comb, and the first Q-tip in Segendorf: a toothpick on which she’d impaled a single catkin.

Still, there was a place deep inside herself that she couldn’t reach. That was where the rankest odors came from. A place, she told herself, where all the bad memories and experiences sat fermenting, producing the sort of vapors that attracted bad men like Markus.

Eating helped. Apples strengthened bad smells, but a slice of bread, generously spread with butter, exorcised them for a couple of hours. Potatoes were especially efficacious, and likewise poppy-seed cakes. No somebody turned her away with a shake of the head if she brought her empty plate back to the kitchen for a second, a third, or a fourth helping. Rosy-cheeked and smacking her lips, Anni spooned up boiled pork belly, casseroles, sugared pancakes, Bavarian stew, she devoured liver dumplings and meatloaf. They tasted spicy and sweet, tender and tough, just right. They crackled, burst, gurgled as she chewed, swilled across her tongue, stuck between her teeth, and she gobbled, gulped, feeling them plunge down her throat, spread through her stomach, and fill her with warmth.