Stones From the River by Ursula Hegi

Author:Ursula Hegi [Hegi, Ursula]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literary, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9781439144763
Google: s_21DbdGRSAC
Publisher: Touchstone
Published: 2011-01-24T11:00:00+00:00

twelve

1939–1941

IF THE RUMORS HAD BEEN ACCURATE AND THE MIDWIFE HAD, INDEED, been pregnant the day of her marriage to the eighteen-year-old Helmut Eberhardt, hers would have been the longest pregnancy in the history of Burgdorf—perhaps even the entire world, the old women would speculate—because Hilde would not give birth until the spring of 1941, nearly two and a half years after her wedding day. Of course, there would be gossip that she’d had a miscarriage and had become pregnant again before her young husband had left for the Russian front, after extracting from her the promise to christen their first child Adolf.

Helmut would not even consider that he might have fathered a daughter, and when Hilde would tell him that she’d like to name a girl after his mother, Renate, he would look at her as though she had insulted the Führer and God.

It was the same look that Helmut had given his mother whenever she had refused to write her house over to him, even though he’d explained to her it was the reasonable thing to do: she could stay in the upstairs rooms, where he and Hilde lived now, and they’d move into the five large rooms on the ground floor.

“After all, as a widow you don’t need much space,” he had told her the week after his wedding. “While Hilde and I will have a lot of children.” He was determined to convert the government’s marriage loan into a gift, and eager for Hilde to earn the Ehrenkreuz der deutschen Mutter. Already he pictured the bronze cross of honor on her dress, to be replaced, of course, by the silver cross and the gold cross as his family grew.

But his mother didn’t understand. “You are welcome to live upstairs,” she said.

He pointed to the gleaming parquet floor. “You have to admit that the entire house has been cared for much better ever since I married Hilde.”

“I don’t ask your wife to clean for me.”

“She likes to clean.… Why are you so stubborn about the house?”

“I am too old to live like a guest.”

In a few years, he would be the same age as his father had been when he’d died. His father had built this house. Surely, his father would want him to live here like a family man, not a son. He gave his mother a winning smile. “You’re not old.”

But she would not smile back.

Throughout that winter and early spring his mother resisted his efforts. The house should rightfully be his, he believed. But with him she was stingy, while her generosity toward others was known throughout town: not only did she give flowers to neighbors, coins to beggars, but she also was kind to Jews, even though it was plain enough for everyone to see that they were not wanted in Burgdorf, in the entire country. Couldn’t she read the signs on the streets and in the windows of stores and restaurants? Juden sind hier unerwünscht—Jews are not wanted here. Juden haben keinen Zutritt—Jews are not allowed to enter.

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