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 (132 page)

But Robert only pointed toward the statue.

“It’s just that goddamn BVM. … Look, there’s nothing to her.”

Robert covered his face with his fingers.

“Pal… little pal.” Homer Wilson pried Robert’s hands loose and carried him down the steps. “Look at it. Just a statue. At least this one’s keeping herself decent. The ones I can’t bear are the flashers … them who pull their gowns apart and flaunt their bloody hearts. That’s what they are—flashers—most of the BVMs.”

Robert dared a quick glance.

“If I have to look at a flasher,” Homer Wilson said, “I’d much rather see a set of tits.”

Tits
. Robert knew what tits were. His mother had them underneath her dress, but Mrs. Wilson sure didn’t. Mrs. Wilson was flat. Like a picture. And she yelled at Mr. Wilson whenever no one else was around. Except Robert, as if he were invisible. Lazy, she called Mr. Wilson. Drunkard. Bum. Gambler. While Mr. Wilson simply stood there and nodded. But in front of Robert’s parents or the tenants, Mrs. Wilson was always friendly to Mr. Wilson and praised him whenever she mentioned his name, saying he knew how to repair anything.

“What were you doing in here by yourself?” Mr. Wilson asked.

“My lamb. It’s in the bin. It—” He thought of his brother, tall and angry. “It fell,” he said. “From upstairs.”

And of course Mr. Wilson was able to retrieve the lamb, just as he was able to fix sinks that were stopped up and doors that squeaked. He shook it till its fur was almost clean, sniffed it, and passed it to Robert with a grimace. “Your pal needs himself a bath.”

Robert clutched the lamb against his chest, mumbling sounds of assurance to it while Mr. Wilson took him by the shoulder and walked him out of the furnace room, through the hallway with its black-and-green diamond-shaped tiles, and to the elevator. There, Mr. Wilson pulled aside the gate that opened like an accordion and pushed the sixth-floor button.

“What happened to your face?” his mother asked. “It’s all messy.” She was sitting with Tobias and Greta on the corner bench in the kitchen, lunch and a vase with tulips on the table.

Robert hid the lamb behind his back and glanced toward his brother, who was crushing his thumb into the firm bread of his
Frikadelle
—meatball sandwich. “I was playing,” Robert said.

“Your manners, Tobias,” his mother said. “Don’t mash your food.”

Robert slid on the bench close to her.

She shook her head. “Mr. Howard has been waiting. You don’t have time to eat before your lesson. Wash your hands.”

He peered at the
Bratkartoffeln
—fried potatoes—and
Frikadellen
she’d prepared, and he knew exactly what they would taste like and how much better they would make him feel. His stomach cramped in protest as he headed toward the sink to wash his hands and his lamb. In the living room, Mr. Howard sat on one edge of the piano bench, his back very straight as he waited, prepared to listen. Quickly, Robert stuck his lamb behind the sofa.

Once his fingers rode the ivory keys, his hunger shrank to a cold point deep inside, and soon, the familiar solace flowed down his neck, his shoulders, and into his fingers.

That afternoon, when Robert sat on the swing, rocking himself with one foot on the ground, Tobias sauntered toward him, black
hair sticking up like a brush around his thin face, one arm hidden behind his back.
A knife?
Robert was sure it was a knife. But it was too late to jump from the swing and run. The fast pulse of panic in his throat, he tried to push himself high on the swing, away from his brother.

But Tobias’ free hand grabbed his knee.

Robert kicked. Kicked hard.

“Idiot.” Tobias let go of him, but his hidden hand swung forward. Shoved something at Robert. “Here.”

A knife a gun a saber—

Not a knife.

A chocolate bar.

A chocolate bar?
Robert hesitated, fearing another prank.
Dog shit pressed into an empty chocolate wrapper
. But the silver foil was new, uncreased. Still…

“Because you didn’t tell,” Tobias said.

Carefully, Robert unwrapped the foil. The chocolate had almonds in it. He took one small bite, hummed softly as he pressed it with his tongue into the high curve of his mouth to make it last. It was so good that he wanted to go there, all of him, to that sweetness at the roof of his mouth, melt there—
prayer is like that, high and arched and holy
—but then he thought of his brother and broke off a piece for him. They chewed, slowly, and there was just the sound of Robert’s humming till they were finished with the chocolate, till his brother stepped behind him to give the swing an easy push, then another, and Robert pumped his legs till he was flying alone, far above the stone bench where his brother sat down, long skinny ankles stretched in front of him.

Though Tobias never built with matches again—
not safe to do so in my father’s house
—he assembled a secret compartment in his top drawer in case he ever wanted to hide something. At the lumberyard across from school, he had a sheet of thin wood cut to size, and he glued four of his old scuffed alphabet blocks into the corners of the drawer, the M and the I and the N and the E—
spelling MINE
—to support the wood, creating a three-inch space only he
knew about. When he stacked his underwear on top, even he couldn’t tell that the drawer had a false bottom. Yet, once it was finished, he couldn’t think of anything worth hiding there. He let his flesh-eating plants die. Promised himself that he would never again own anything he couldn’t bear to destroy.

Instead of remaining Robert’s tormentor, he elected himself his protector, launching into speeches of defense, especially when his father scolded Robert for leaving his shoes untied or walking too slowly; and as he honed his strength in these daily battles against his father, Stefan saw a side in his oldest son he’d never seen before. It made him feel a certain pride, made him wonder if, perhaps, having the boy step on those flimsy little fabrications of his had been good after all for his spine. Still, he would have liked to reverse what he’d made Tobias do.

One Sunday at breakfast, he felt the blaze of the boy’s eyes on him and glanced up, only to catch him turning away. He pointed to his son’s plate. “Eat your eggs, Tobias. They’re getting cold.”

The boy glowered at him. Asked what he’d already asked him several times lately. “Could you please pronounce my name the American way?
To-buy-as. Not To-bee-as.”

“Eat your eggs then,
To-buy-as.”
Stefan tried to joke. “They’re still getting cold.”

But the boy didn’t even smile.

Maybe, Stefan speculated, he’s embarrassed to have a father who speaks with an accent. Recently, he’d been feeling clumsy and unpolished whenever he talked to the boy, who made him self-conscious about an accent he usually didn’t hear. The awareness of his son’s distrust, hate even, would shift itself into Stefan’s thoughts while he was at his restaurant, cooking or greeting his guests. He was used to making happen what he wanted, but with Tobias that didn’t work. With others the boy was talkative, always philosophizing, persuading; but with him he was evasive. Except when he was flying at him with words to defend Robert.

As Stefan finished his coffee, it occurred to him that he was not well suited to be a father. And here he was with three children, but without the skill or habit of asking forgiveness. All at once he desperately
wanted to reach Tobias. “Let’s go rowing, you and I,” he said.

When Helene frowned at him, he realized his words had sounded like an order. She’d been distant with him ever since the boy had run off, watchful, taking the children’s side against him.

“You’ll enjoy being in the boat, Tobias,” he said, and when the boy squinted at the window and the gray sky as if to question his decision, Stefan insisted.

He obeyed, of course, the boy. But for the two hours that they were on the lake—switching seats to take turns at the oars whenever Stefan suggested—Tobias only answered in short syllables and kept his eyes on the water as if he didn’t feel welcome in any space where his father was. As Stefan thought of Sara and what she would say if she knew her son didn’t feel welcome with him, he felt ashamed. Angry too that Tobias was not responding to his efforts. And yet, to be honest with himself, he had to remember how often he had pushed the boy aside because he was too busy.

The clouds were getting denser, darkening their reflections on the water, and in the blunt light, the boy’s jaw and cheekbones were even more angular than usual. He has his mother’s
Schlafzimmeraugen
—bedroom eyes—Stefan thought.

Aloud, he said, “Are you eating enough?”

Tobias nodded.
I won’t come to your funeral What if he’s drowning? I won’t save him. What if a train is coming right at him? No. What if—

“Because you’re awfully thin.” He had gone into Tobias’ room one day when the children had been at school and Helene at the store, and he’d found nothing built from the wood he’d given him, nothing made from matchsticks. The room had been so bare that he’d felt a deep failure at having a son who lived in his house as if he were a guest. He had checked beneath the boy’s bed, inside his closet, feeling odd and yet unable to stop himself as he’d opened his closet and drawers; but other than clothes, he’d found nothing personal. Nothing. He’d been seized by a piercing and inexplicable homesickness, and it wasn’t until now, in the boat, that he knew the homesickness had to do with the distance from this son whom
he hadn’t tried to know. And that something had been wrong between him and the boy for much longer than these last few weeks since he’d made him break his toy animals.

Suddenly he wanted to fill Tobias with the best nourishment he could provide for him, build a wall of safety between his son and death by cooking for him, him alone, as extravagantly as for an entire wedding party: cream of leek soup; liver pâté; ratatouille; omelets stuffed with the
tapenade
he made from garlic and capers and ground hazelnuts; roasted vegetables brushed with olive oil;
frangipani—hazelnuts. Put hazelnuts on the list. Cream
. “You really should eat more,” Stefan said hoarsely.

Even my body. Even that is not right for him. What if a tree falls on him? No. What if he asks for me while dying? No
.

“If you weren’t so thin, you’d look a lot like my father.… You know what he used to tell me?”

Don’t
, Tobias thought, but here it was already, the old embarrassing story about the hair, about Blau men being hairier than other men.…

“’You can recognize a Blau by his back,’ that’s what my father told me. ‘Pelts,’ he would say, ‘regular pelts.…’ And that he could pick out a Blau man, just by his back, from a hundred men.” Stefan reached across to touch his son’s shoulder.

But Tobias flinched.

Stefan’s hand fell away. “Let me have the oars,” he said hoarsely and motioned to pinpricks of rain on the surface of the lake. “I want to get you home.”

Tobias hadn’t noticed the drops till he saw their indentations on the water, but when his father turned the boat around, he felt them cold on his wrists, his forehead. Curving his shoulders, he tucked his fingers beneath his armpits and watched his father’s house draw near, immense beyond the dock and the stripe of pale sand. On the gray water, its reflection was even more immense, spreading toward the rowboat like spilled ink, darker than the clouds; and as the rain came at him, harder, the house seemed to be boiling around him and his father.

After that, Tobias became aware how much he disliked to be touched—not just by his father, but by anyone. It could be a teacher resting a hand on his shoulder, boys brushing against him in the hallway or sitting so close to him in class that Tobias would feel their elbows against his, making him feel hot and jumpy. Though he ignored girls, they were always going dreamy over him: they’d follow him on his way to classes, ask Greta and Robert questions about him, stroll past the
Wasserburg
hoping to see him. Even Fanny Braddock chased after him, affectionate like a three-year-old though they both were twelve.