Anni and Arkadiusz
In 1930, on the night before their wedding, Anni and Arkadiusz stole away and rushed to their new home. There my sister sang and danced for Arkadiusz in a dress with beige ruffles, which she’d put on for only one purpose: so that he could tear it off. The way the rough fabric scratched her skin made her feel as though she had sloughed off a redundant Yesterday and slipped into a fresh, form-fitting Now. Only once did she interrupt her swaying dance and stand listening, because she thought for a moment she’d heard a strange, yet familiar, voice. Mine. She breathed Arkadiusz’s scent, which he renewed every time he immersed himself in the Moorsee, and his breath told her that deep inside him many good things were sleeping. Naked, she sang out his name, and there were as many ways to pronounce it as there were reasons to love Arkadiusz Kamil Driajes.
She’d brought him to Segendorf as a stranger, anticipating the usuaclass="underline" suspicious glances, shouts of “Klöble,” and brandished pitchforks.
And rightly so. Not five minutes after they’d crossed the borders of the village, the innkeeper spat on the floor at Arkadiusz’s feet, Blacksmith Schwaiger applauded, and a somebody with an angry scowl motioned Anni away from him. And what did Arkadiusz do? He let go of Anni’s hand, made for the somebody, and before the latter knew what was happening, took his hand. Arkadiusz gave it a hearty shake, with his slightly inclined servant’s posture, and congratulated the somebody on his divine farmhouse. Since Anni was well aware of how horribly brawls in Segendorf tended to end, she shut her eyes. As no savage fracas followed, she hazarded a second look: Blacksmith Schwaiger had stopped applauding, the somebody was still gripping Arkadiusz’s hand, and the expression on his face was remarkably friendly, given that a Pole had stepped into Segendorf without warning, holding hands with the somebody’s adopted daughter — a bit skeptical, yes, but with sympathy beginning to flash from the corners of his eyes.
That night he allowed Arkadiusz to sleep on a heap of straw in the barn, and the night after that, by the hearth in the parlor.
And that was by no means all. In December Markus and his gang tipped a bucket of pig’s blood over Arkadiusz’s head, and found the whole business rather comical; but as soon as January, they were helping him tear down the ruins of our old house — a demonstration of his breath-holding trick had made a deep impression on them. In March, though the thaw had barely set in, half the town was sawing, hammering, and drilling, putting up a new home for the couple-to-be.
For Arkadiusz, it was all just a matter of patience. Segendorfers were no different from fish in a frozen lake; to catch them, all you needed to do was stand watch long enough at the hole in the ice. He said hello and hello and hello, smiled and smiled and smiled, begged and begged and begged, asked and asked and asked. For days, sometimes weeks at a time, people would pay him no attention at all, and he simply held his breath. If he’d learned anything at the Circus Rusch, it was this: to carry on. Generally speaking, the supply of human patience was limited — but his own was infinite. Eventually he always reached the point where someone would return his greeting, his smile, do him a kindness, give him an answer. And then he’d seize the moment, and catch his fish.
For Anni, on the other hand, Arkadiusz was and remained a shape-shifter. As such, he could assume any form that would bring him some benefit: for Farmer Obermüller’s widow, he was Farmer Obermüller, and for the somebodies, he was a well-bred lackey. For Anni herself, Arkadiusz was sometimes our mother or our father, when he held her close; sometimes me, when he romped around with her; sometimes a recalcitrant child, when she tried to teach him to read and write; and sometimes merely a mellow thirty-four-year-old man.
For those who were able to look a little deeper, Arkadiusz was simply a foreigner. Someone whom Segendorf was willing to tolerate because they were happy finally to be getting rid of Anni — daughter of the Habom siblings, who’d murdered Nick Habom and been burned alive in their own house — a fourteen-year-old girl with a fanatical need to clean her body, who’d stripped Markus of half his scalp, who wandered through the wilderness, who played with Mina the Klöble. A bad match for any man. What a relief that her love had struck someone from elsewhere!
Whichever version was the case, the only certain thing is that every single one led to the night before their wedding, when Anni sang and danced for Arkadiusz in their freshly timbered parlor, and for the first time showed herself to him entirely unencumbered by clothing. Thanks to a generous distribution of Most Beloved Possessions from our former home, the room already seemed lived-in. A green radiance compensated for so much that had burned: flowerpots clustered everywhere, vines hung from beams or climbed up over them, leaves reached toward windows, exhaling sweet scents and trembling with Anni’s dance, as she spun in place like a clumsy ballerina, and sang Arkadiusz’s name. He didn’t notice her awkward voice: as long as he could stare at her mouth, as round as a fish’s, smell her hair, cast his shadow on her pale skin, nothing sounded wrong at all. And it also didn’t feel wrong that he still hadn’t rushed back to help his own family; staying here in Segendorf, he told himself, meant that he could continue his search for the gold. Even if he knew very well that the real reason was something completely different: Arkadiusz was happy with his life as never before, and in marrying Anni he’d be prolonging this state of things, making her dance eternal.
Now she stood before him, so close that her breath grazed his face. Stark naked, she loomed over him. She looked at him, looked at him with glittering, sparkling, glowing eyes, and as he stretched his hand toward her, there was a knock at the door, and Anni flinched away. She furrowed her brow, wrapped herself in a knitted blanket, and opened it. Arkadiusz certainly couldn’t see me out there in the dark, but he observed something that he hadn’t seen for months now:
Anni shaking her head.
PART VII. Pushing the World
Saint Helena
For three days nobody knew whether Fred’s heart would decide for or against a premature halt. Albert stayed at his bedside. Alfonsa had set up a bunk bed in the infirmary, where Albert and Klondi slept; Albert below, naturally. Which meant that, for Albert, sleep was out of the question; when his worries didn’t keep him awake, Klondi did, with her tempestuous snoring. Every time they went to get something to eat, it felt wrong to Albert to sit at the nuns’ table in the dining hall, but Alfonsa, with whom he hadn’t exchanged a single word since their talk, insisted. Among the orphans, these interlopers constituted the subject of conversation. Most assumed they were a family. Some of them who knew Albert even believed he’d found his mother, and sat stewing with envy.