Stones From the River by Ursula Hegi Read Free Book Online Page A

“Look,” she said and peered into the brook as if trying to find something lost.
    Slowly, beyond the surface of the current, another pattern emerged for Trudi—that of new leaves, their long reflections bobbing in one place while the water rushed through them, and amongst the leaves, the silver moon-shapes of two faces.
    From that day on, her mother seemed distracted—even in her frantic behavior she seemed distracted, as if already drawn to something beyond the house and the town. No longer would she grasp Trudi to pull her against herself or lift her to the window; it was almost as if she were returning to that time after Trudi’s birth when she hadn’t wanted to touch her at all.
    In May, Frau Doktor Rosen recommended another stay in Grafenberg, and Gertrud Montag went willingly, but Trudi was inconsolable. Leo found that he could soothe Trudi with music, and he’d lift her on the counter of the pay-library, where she’d sit quietly next to the phonograph, one finger tracing the swirls of the rich wood as she’d listen to the records. It made him uneasy when his customers would praise him for bearing up well under the burden of his wife and child. “They’re no burden,” he’d say.
    When Gertrud returned home, she was even more bewildered than before. If Trudi reached for her, she’d smile and, perhaps, bend to adjust Trudi’s collar or retie one of her shoelaces, though it was good and tight. She no longer had to be coaxed into the sewing room, but sought out that isolation and even took to sleeping on the velvet sofa, curled on only half of the space as though her body had shrunk.
    Every morning, as soon as she was dressed, Trudi would dash up the stairs to be locked in with her mother: she’d pretend to make tea and place an imaginary cup into the slack hands; she’d dress the paper dolls and climb on the sofa to hold them up to the mirror so that each doll had a twin; she’d sit on her mother’s lap and stroke her face. But beneath all that, she fought the shame that her mother’s vision was forever tangled.
    The last time Gertrud Montag went to the asylum, she huggedTrudi by the open door of her wardrobe, holding her close for so long that it seemed she would never release her. It was the beginning of July, two weeks before Trudi’s fourth birthday, and her mother was wearing a cotton dress printed with peach-colored roses. One of her travel bags was packed, but the suitcases and hatboxes were still stacked on top of the birch wardrobe—a sure sign that she wouldn’t be gone for long.
    “When I get back,” she said, “things will be better between us.”
    And Trudi—her face against her mother’s hip, breathing in the familiar clear scent of her skin and clothes—Trudi believed her.
    That day, she stayed next door with Frau Blau, whose house always smelled of floor wax. While the old woman polished her keys and dusted her windowsills, Trudi followed her around. The tip of Frau Blau’s right forefinger was bent to the side, and Trudi felt convinced it was that way from too much dusting. Frau Blau had soft, powdered cheeks and a broken heart. People said her heart had broken in 1894 when her son, Stefan, had run away to America. It was a sorrow that lapped into two centuries, a sorrow that already had lasted—so Trudi counted—twenty-five years.
    Since the Blaus didn’t throw anything away, their house was crammed full with ancient toys and furniture, doilies and flower pots, gifts that their son shipped from America, and clothes that had belonged to their children and long-dead ancestors. Of Dutch descent, Frau Blau cleaned her house every single day. If her Saviour came to her at night, she told Trudi, she wanted him to find her house in order.
    “You can help,” Frau Blau decided and showed Trudi how to dust the table legs, each ending in a lion’s claws gripping a ball. A cloth around her crooked forefinger, she guided it into every little crevice.
    “You can do the next leg,”