twenty-three

In my dream I swam in the river, diving deep into the water, sounds echoing around me, a school of fish and a ship gliding past above me, and then someone moaning. Was it Barbara? It seemed that Aunt Ida was saying, “Ah, I know, I know.”

I was alone in Aunt Ida’s kitchen, I thought. But the blur of water covered me and I floated, eyes closed.

Later I heard another voice. “Gone. Everything gone.”

It seemed as if I were in a tunnel now, with voices bouncing off one wall and onto another.

A baby was crying. Was it Maria? But this sound was the sound of a newborn child, high and weak.

I opened my eyes and felt with my hands under the thin blanket. My own clothes were gone. I was wearing a huge cotton nightgown.

And how hard the bed had become, reminding me of the hot nights I had slept on the roof upstairs. Then something tugged at my mind. The roof. What had the blacksmith been doing on the roof? How did he breathe in that forge of his?

I shook my head. I was dreaming, half asleep, half awake. And then I remembered. The fire.

I tried to sit up, but it was hard to move, hard to breathe.

“You’ve slept most of the night and most of the day,” Aunt Ida said.

I turned my head. I could see a corner of the parlor, two stippled walls, two chairs.

“The other way, Dina,” Aunt Ida said. “Look here.”

I turned back to see her sitting there and realized I was on the floor with a blanket folded underneath me. “Barbara?” I asked.

“In the bedroom.”

I ran my tongue over my lips.

“She’s had a baby, Dina, a boy.”

I struggled to sit up, feeling a knocking in my head and a sudden surge of sickness coming up from my stomach. “Is everything all right?”

“A fine baby,” she said. “Ernest, after your grandfather. And Maria is in the kitchen with Lucas. She’s all right, too, not a burn, not a mark.”

Alive, then; all of us alive. I raised my hand to my head, feeling the pain in my fingers, seeing the strips of cloth that covered my arm from wrist to elbow.

“It’s not a bad burn,” she said, “but still, I’ve covered it with lard.”

I nodded, and before I was even sure I was thirsty, she was off the chair and bending over me, holding my head up so that I could sip from a cup of cool water. I swished it around in my mouth. Had I ever tasted anything so good?

I gathered the blanket around me and went to stand at the bedroom door to see baby Ernest. He had a small fuzz of hair on his head, and his face was red from the effort of crying, waving his fists in the air.

I went into the room to lean over him, and put my mouth on his forehead, the skin wrinkled and softer than anything I’d ever felt before. I touched his chin, his shoulders, his fists, and it seemed as if he stared up at me, knowing who I was. And I knew who he was, all of us in our family, my grandparents, my mother, dear Papa. I felt as if I’d never loved anyone so much.

Next to him, Barbara smiled at me, her eyes filling, too. I watched them: tears drying on Barbara’s cheeks, the baby’s fists relaxing and falling to his chest. And in my mind I heard Barbara’s voice again, Everything gone.

Not everything.

But I thought then of my suitcase with the pink lining, the money for home, my clothes, even my shoes. Every trace of home, so many things Katharina and Mama had made for me.

And what about the Uncle’s fabric? The pile of trousers for the man at the shop? Would we not have to pay for them? I tried to get the words out. “Cloth” was all I could manage. And then I had an even worse thought: what had happened to the sewing machine, the black beetle?

“Sleep,” Aunt Ida said. “We will worry later.”

How strange—sun was streaming in the dusty window. It was daytime. I went back to the parlor dragging my blanket. I was going to sleep as if night had just begun.

Ernest was crying again; the cry wove itself into my dreams, and Maria’s coughing, as well. When I woke again, at last, it was afternoon. It had begun to snow. A soft gray light filtered through the window. I sat up to see the three of them sleeping in the bed in the corner. Barbara was in the middle, her arms around Maria and the baby.

On the floor next to me was a neatly folded pile of clothes. Underwear, a waist and skirt, wool stockings, and even a pair of worn shoes.

I put everything on quietly, wondering what had happened to Kristel’s shoes.

“Thank you for the clothing,” I said to Aunt Ida when I reached the kitchen, “but where . . .”

“Mine,” she said. “Are you awake? Feeling better?” She waved her hand. “A stitch here and there, a snip of the scissors this morning. You are just half my size.” She smiled. “The size of the shoes is . . .”

“Fine,” I said. I leaned over to give her a kiss. “I want to go back and see the apartment.”

“Don’t do that, Dina,” she said with a quick shake of her head. “Let it be.”

My eyes were brimming with the thought of the apartment on Christmas evening, filled with candles, soft in that light. “I have to,” I said, and she patted my shoulder with her warm hand, sighing. “That’s what Lucas said.”

I let myself out the door and went down the stairs. Outside, the flakes were large, covering everything: the lights had small caps, and the steps clean new pillows of snow. I turned the corner, hurrying now.

When I reached our street, I could see there were gaping holes where windows had been, and great patches of black covered the building. In front of me were piles of wood and rubble.

Others had had the same idea I did. People picked through the charred remnants on the first floor, people who hadn’t even lived there.

I went inside toward the stairs, wondering if they would hold me. Treads were missing, and the banister looped over the steps. I looked up, fingering the sides of my skirt, and behind me someone said, “Don’t try it, miss.”

But suppose something was left? Something I could bring Barbara or Maria.

And underneath it all I was thinking of the money tucked behind the lining of my trunk. Suppose that heavy wood had withstood the fire? Suppose I could put my fingers inside and find my money, neatly folded?

Home.

Bent almost double under a beam that seesawed over the banister, I started up. Smoke still swirled on the high ceilings, and everything was warm to the touch. I pulled my skirt higher, and holding on to the side of the wall rather than the banister, I eased my way from one step to another, feeling my own unsteadiness and the unsteadiness of the stairs themselves.

I stopped where the Uncle had handed Maria down to me and saw that a small piece of her blanket had caught in the banister, blackened, almost like paper. No one would have recognized it as the soft pink shawl Barbara had knitted, leaning over in the dim light in the evenings.

The next flights were easier, not that they were in better condition, but I knew now how to use my shoulder against the wall, the hand that wasn’t burned against the tread itself. Like a small spider I went up.

When I reached the top, I saw our door half open. The rug with its poor bare spot under the machine had burned away. But the machine was there, a melted ruin, and so was the Uncle. He was leaning over it, crying.

The Uncle. Crying.

I took a step backward, and another, and rounded the top step so he wouldn’t know I was there. But in my haste I touched something, the edge of the banister, perhaps, and one of the posts detached, falling through the opening to the next floor, and the next, hitting everything as it went, making a tremendous clatter, raising smoke and dust, and causing someone below to call, “All right up there?”

The Uncle turned as I went toward him, staring at me, surprised, his eyes red, but I might not have known he was crying if I hadn’t seen it.

“What are you doing here?” His voice was shaky. “You climbed the stairs? What is the matter with you?” He was like the Prussians: attack, attack. Always I had to defend myself.

I shook my head, running my hands over the machine.

“Foolish,” he said, as if he hadn’t done the same thing, maneuvered those stairs to see.

My mouth was dry. “My money, all in the trunk.”

I walked past him, glancing in at the kitchen. Bags had sprung open, and flour and sugar were mixed together, gray and grainy on the floor.

And then my own closet bedroom: the mattress sagging and dark, the trunk closed in front of it, covered with soot and patches of black, and pitted in spots.

I sank down on the floor to run my hands over the metal strips, and opened the trunk to see nothing: clothes gone, lining gone, money gone, all of it just a layer of ash on the bottom.

I knew I’d never go home. Never see the house in Breisach, or my family. Never.

Everything gone.

I rested my head on my knees. This was the worst moment of my life, worse than the soldiers at the river that day, worse than saying goodbye, worse than the terrible trip with the storm and my terrified prayer that I’d never eat again on Good Friday if only we survived.

I don’t know how long I crouched there, but then I remembered the Uncle. I went back to stand in the hallway, seeing that the machine belts had burned and snapped, and the piles of trousers and fabric were completely gone, as if they had never existed. Like my clothing. Like the lining and my money.

“Will you have to pay the man for the trousers?” I asked slowly. Even talking seemed an effort.

He didn’t answer. He was down on his knees now, his head tilted, trying to see if he could repair it.

Of course he’d have to pay for the trousers.

And the fabric. The fabric that had belonged to him, that would start his business; that terrible scratchy wool, the lengths of cotton. I remembered that I had taken enough for a dress for myself without thanking him. I had never paid him back for it.

I bent down next to him. It was no use. The sewing machine that I had hated was gone along with everything else.

“I was going to go home,” I said, hardly realizing I was saying it aloud.

We left an hour later, with no energy to talk, but the mailman came running after us waving a letter from Katharina. I knew it would be her Christmas greetings. How strange. Christmas seemed such a long time ago.

1 November 1871

My dear Dina,

How busy we are you can imagine, but Friedrich and Franz are helping greatly. Everyone is thinking about winter and the holidays coming. I think that by the time you receive this it will be Christmas, so I send you the happiest of Christmas greetings.

At last that terrible soldier has gone. Krist spoke to him and says he will never come back.

I, too, am thinking I might have a wonderful surprise. It is too early to tell yet, but Krist and I are hoping that we will have an announcement to make very soon.

Much love,
Katharina

Happy Christmas, dear Dina.

Friedrich and Franz send kisses, and I also.

Love,
Mama