Almost Everything Very Fast (25 page)

For every new morning, for every snipped hair, for every shake of the head, for every sunbeam on her skin and every crystal of frost on her window, a secret wish …

Mama, Papa, and Julius are alive

Not to smell bad smells

To eat without ever having to go to the latrine

Always sweet air, throughout the house, and in the cowshed, too

To be big without having to grow

A cookbook for Christmas, with pictures like in the one from before

Or a brick for the bed that stays warm all night long

To take away the eyes from the peeping boys

And the hands from the nosy men

And both from Farmer Egler

A surprise

To wake up in Mama and Papa’s bed with Mama and Papa

Make it so that somebody could read my wishes, if I were to write them down (preferably a magician who likes me)

That Mina the Klöble gives me her leather boots

That snow is warm

And ice not slippery, but like snow

And that hair stops growing after trimming it

And that my eyes are as green as a cloverleaf

And that the Sacrificial Festival is a Gift Festival

And that Mama and Papa and Julius can hear me

And that I see them, Mama and Papa and Julius, really see them

Or else, that I am with Mama and Papa and Julius now, because I wasn’t outside on the night of the Sacrificial Festival

To fly

White light stabbed at her eyes. Anni ran across a snow-covered field toward the Moorsee, sinking up to her knees in the snow with every step, a cold headwind whipping her cheeks and tearing at her cloak. When she reached the wooden pier from which, on hot summer days, the two of us had leapt into the water hand in hand, she closed her eyes and held her breath. Now she was alone with her heartbeat. Apart from my sister, nobody made the hour-long trek to the Moorsee during the winter. She came to the lake as often as possible. It was a nothing-place: no smells, no noises.

Cautiously, she lowered herself from the pier onto the frozen surface, dodging those spots where the ice was shot through with cracks, and rushed on all fours toward the center of the lake, where, wiping the snow and frost aside, she sat observing her reflection. Darkly gleaming curls spilled from under her knit cap, her thirteen-year-old face was full and round; since she’d started eating with gusto again, the number of dimples had doubled.

Something moved beneath the ice. Anni let out a shrill scream, shook her head, breathed on her reflection, polished it with her sleeve, and leaned so close that the tip of her nose touched the ice—nothing to see. The lake was as black as if night were hiding down there, waiting out the day.

During her last excursion a few days earlier, she’d stayed until her hands and feet had gone completely numb, and when she’d stood up to head for home, she’d noticed a little red dot, a tiny fleck of color in the snow, that marked where she’d been sitting. Immediately she’d examined her skirt and her stockings, following the trail back to her underwear. Am I freezing to death? had been her first thought, Will I go heaven? her second; the third, fourth, and fifth: to see Mama, Papa, and Julius? Apart from a slight feeling of dizziness, she’d made it back to Segendorf entirely unscathed, and washed herself and her clothes. And said nothing about it. But one of the somebodies had noticed the traces in her underwear. “Am I going to die?” Anni had asked curiously. This time it had been a somebody who’d given a shake of the head: “You’re just getting a woman’s flesh and blood.”

Since then she’d devoted even more time to her bodily hygiene. Whenever she had an opportunity, while milking the cows, at night, or in the latrine, she’d check to see if it had happened again. That strange blood, how hesitantly it flowed, its rust-red color and piercing smell.

“I’m becoming a woman now,” Anni proclaimed to her reflection in the ice.

“Dying,” it answered, “you can do that some other time.”

She skidded around on the ice for a while, and was about to say good-bye to her reflection, when she noticed an animal climbing from a hole in the ice near the opposite shore. It walked on two legs, had two arms, most of its hair on its head, and otherwise, as far as she could tell from that distance, it was naked. It had to be an animal. No man could endure this cold, not without clothing.

It vanished behind a curtain of dark-green fir boughs. As fast as she could, Anni slid back toward the dock, ignoring the soft crackling beneath her, and as soon as she’d reached the shore, ran back toward the village. Mina had lost her father to a rabid fox, and Carpenter Huber had been attacked by a wolf once in broad daylight. (Thus his odd posture while sitting—he had to balance himself on his remaining buttock, the left one.) Anni ran. But even that seemed much too slow to escape some beast that might catch her scent, come lunging after her, sink its teeth into her flesh—she ranranran. Her heart dictated the pace, her knees burned, her feet ached, the wind drew tears from her eyes and pumped frigid air through her body. When Anni reached the somebodies’ house, she slammed the door behind her. Its creaking wasn’t oppressive, as usual—it was the sweetest sound in the world. She sank to the floor and wept into her hands, without knowing why. I’ll never go back there, she swore to herself. Never leave the village again.

The very next morning she set out again. She followed her own footprints. The night had frozen them into the snow. When she reached the Moorsee, Anni sat down at the end of the pier, letting her legs dangle, and waited. She kept her eyes on the hole in the far shore where the animal had appeared. Before long something stirred in the underbrush, and Anni hid herself beneath the pier—but it was only a deer that drank a bit out of the hole in the ice before vanishing back into the woods. Anni sighed. The sun was shining on her left cheek, it shone on her woolen cap, and then, for a little while, since she’d gotten a bit too warm, it shone on her bare hair, and finally it shone on her right cheek. Nothing moved. She’d long since devoured the little lunch that she’d brought along with her. She sucked on an icicle she’d broken off the pier. When the sun turned a pale lilac, she trudged off with slumped shoulders. Just before reaching the turn in the path, she spun back to the Moorsee and shouted, “You stupid muckhole!”

Under the somebodies’ roof, such expressions were forbidden. Even though Master Baker Reindl thought it was the perfect description for Segendorf. The pine trees on the opposite shore answered
, Ole-ole-ole!
At that very moment, the animal emerged from its hole and turned to look at her. Anni fell to her belly and peeped over the snowbanks: the creature was standing up to its chest in the water, scanning the opposite shore. Then it slipped back into the forest. Anni leapt up and ran along the lakeshore, dodging branches, leaping over roots, but never taking her eyes from the spot where the creature had disappeared among the trees. When she reached it, she heard a branch snapping, followed the sound as quietly as possible, pressing deeper into the woods, groping from trunk to trunk in the half-light, scraping her palms on the bark, creeping slowly along, then pausing to listen: the tentative groans of the trees, and beneath, her heartbeat. Anni panted for breath, coughed, stumbled, tripped over a pine sapling. Its needles fluttered. The last sunbeams hung in the treetops high above her, and down below the shadows were gathering. If our father had been there, she would simply have had to hold his callused hand to find herself home again: the forest had swallowed him up every morning, and every evening spat him out again, often with some sort of booty in tow. Anni stood up, and set her cap aright. “I know my way around here,” she said to herself. “I KNOW MY WAY AROUND HERE JUST FINE.”

Ine-ine-ine! mocked the pines.

The creature stepped out from behind a tree not five feet in front of her. It wasn’t naked any longer, instead it wore pants and a shirt and a coat, like a man, and it nodded and even spoke to her like one: “Can you find your way home alone?”

In fact, the animal looked quite human, Anni thought, and shook her head, as if in a trance. She concluded he must be a shape-shifter. My sister had always been the more credulous of the two of us. Legend had it that shape-shifters were masters of metamorphosis. They could change their form at will, be it to fish, fir tree, or man.

“Have you hurt yourself?” he asked, pointing at her hands.

She bit her tongue to stop herself from shaking her head. On every side darkness blocked her way. In her head a chorus of children’s voices shouted the moor rhyme:

“Do you need a bandage?” The shape-shifter came closer. “Forgive me—I’m pestering you with questions.” His bright voice sounded friendly, respectful, and he articulated every word with the utmost precision, which meant that he certainly wasn’t from around there. “Probably best that you head for home.” His posture was a trifle stooped, as if a bow were in the offing; had she met him under other circumstances, she might have taken him for some kind of servant. “It’s getting dark.” Before Anni knew what was happening, he was right in front of her; she could make out the tiny droplets of water hanging in his gray-brown beard. He said, “May I ask you something?” then slapped himself on the forehead with the palm of his hand, smiling. “Did it again!” A comely laugh.

Then he reached out to touch a lock of her hair. “You smell lovely.” All of a sudden his voice was huskier and his nostrils flared and the muscles of his chest stood out.

He had transformed himself into Markus.

Anni flinched back, sucking in the damp air of the forest, her back colliding with a tree trunk. “What do you want?”

No answer.

There was a new, more acrid smell in her nostrils now. The shape-shifter blinked at her, his mouth opened and shut, opened and shut. Like a stupid puppet’s. In her head there were so many words, and now all of them rushed out at once. Anni clawed with her hands into the tree bark, and it hurt her, that was a good feeling, she drove her fingers deeper and deeper into the wood, then a scream leapt out—and all of the words followed. The forest’s echoes could barely keep up, the words leapt out from every direction and whirred through the air, one devouring the next devouring the next, and the night was as dark as it was crammed with Anni’s words. “Do you want to kill me? Is that what you want? Then by all means, do it! It’s not a bad thing, not to me! Then I’ll go to heaven! Because I want to go soon anyway! Because, you see, Mama and Papa and Julius are there! They’re waiting for me! They want me to come to them! Because they love me! They love me! They’ll be happy when I’m dead! Then we’ll be together again!”

The shape-shifter slapped her.

Anni lunged forward and slapped him back.

They stared at each other in silence. An owl screamed above them, shadows crawled below, somewhere snow slipped from a branch. His hand still lay against her cheek, her own still touched his beard, which didn’t feel scratchy at all, but soft. She said, “I’m Anni,” and the shape-shifter, more tenderly than anyone ever had before, muttered, “Anni.” Then he introduced himself, and Anni’s tongue leapt, rolled, arched itself as she repeated, “Arkadiusz Kamil Driajes.”

Arkadiusz’s father, Kamil Piotr Driajes, had fallen in 1914 at the Battle of Tannenberg, which hadn’t occurred at Tannenberg at all, but rather at Allenstein. The poor man had been on a fishing trip in East Prussia, and no one had bothered to warn him that on that precise day, right on the plain where his favorite pond was located, the Russian and German armies were going to clash. His family never discovered which side was responsible for lobbing the fatal grenade. After his death, his wife, Aneta Natalia Driajes, found it impossible to support their nine children alone; so Arkadiusz, the oldest, who still lived at home at the age of eighteen—without a job, a wife, or children—promised her that he’d seek out remunerative work, that he’d conquer the proudest woman in all of Poland, and finally, that he’d provide her with so many grandchildren that they’d have to found a whole village called Driajes, at which point poor Aneta kissed his hand in thanks.

Then again, it might have been that after his father’s death she’d simply kicked him out of the house—Arkadiusz expressed himself rather vaguely when he was describing all this to Anni. After he’d bidden his eight brothers and sisters farewell, he drew a deep breath, threw the leather pouch filled with his few belongings over his shoulder, and struck up a merry walking tune. Life couldn’t be that difficult, could it?

Arkadiusz spent weeks looking for work, with no results, and more and more often he found himself slipping up shadowy side streets to avoid friends and acquaintances whom, once upon a time, he would have invited to share a bottle of vodka; he was ashamed of the tattered and desperate shape that stared back at him from mud puddles. The conquering of the proudest woman in Poland, whoever she was, had been deferred to some other day. After that cold, wet November, even half-moldy stew salvaged from the garbage cans looked delicious to him, and there were so many holes and tears in his clothes that they showed more skin than they hid. It wasn’t that he hadn’t tried, it was just that work wasn’t generally associated with sleeping in, but rather with getting up at an hour when even roosters were still asleep. And rising early was not one of Arkadiusz’s strong suits. No matter how often he promised himself to hop out of bed in the morning, as soon as his eyelids fell shut, he slept like the dead, arms folded behind his head, as if nothing and no one could do him any harm. Shaking, cold water, barked threats—none were of any help.