Stones From the River by Ursula Hegi Page A

one, the women with hats or black scarves knotted beneath their chins, the men in black suits and hats—to drop handfuls of dirt into the grave, they kept glancing toward Trudi, prepared to comfort her if she cried, and when she didn’t, they were baffled but told her that she was a brave little girl. They didn’t know that the roots of her hair hurt, and that each breath clogged her chest.
    Leo Montag stood rigid as if carved into the landscape. Next to him stood one of his comrades from the war, Judge Spiecker. Though the judge was only Leo’s age, his body gave off an old smell that came from somewhere deep inside and traveled on his breath and sweat although he kept himself fanatically clean.
    Swallows and pigeons swayed in the trees and hedges, and the scent of violets from Frau Simon’s perfume muted the smell of the flowers. When Herr Pastor Schüler bent and reached beneath the cuffs of his trousers to scratch himself, Trudi noticed that the skin on his legs was taut and shiny as though the hairs had all been scratched away. Specks of white powder drifted from under his cassock to settle on the polished black tops of his shoes.
    Trudi wondered where the grave with the hand was. Somewhere in the Catholic section of the cemetery, so she’d heard from several people, was the grave of a woman who’d hit her parents when she was a girl. As punishment and as a warning to other children—“Never ever raise your hand toward your parents,”—her hand had grown from her grave seventy years later when she’d died. Though Trudi had never found the grave, she was sure it was there, the hand curled between the shrubs like a blossom, ready to spread into a claw that would seize you if you came close.
    A trick wind lifted the hem of Frau Doktor Rosen’s skirt and shifted through the bouquets and wreaths so that—for an instant—they seemed to be sliding toward the hole. Eva Rosen and her two older brothers stood next to their mother, but Herr Rosen hadn’t come with them. He was from a rich old family and seldom left his house. On days when the sun was out—even in winter—Trudi would see him resting on the canvas lounge chair on his veranda, a soft man with receding hair and pink skin, his body covered with a plaid blanket.Some said he was quite ill; others insisted there was nothing wrong with him; yet, they all speculated why Frau Doktor Rosen wasn’t able to cure her husband.
    As the pastor sprinkled holy water into the grave, Trudi hooked one finger into the rubber band beneath her chin and let it snap, again and again, until all she felt was that sting.
    “Don’t hurt yourself,” the taxidermist said and enveloped Trudi’s hand with his warm fingers.
    At the house, as if to make up for Leo Montag’s silence, Frau Blau thanked the judge for coming. “We are honored,” she said. It was her way of acknowledging that the judge was of a better class than most of the guests. She cut pieces of
Streuselkuchen
for Frau Doktor Rosen and her children, but she reminded Trudi, “Wash your hands before you eat.” When she spit on her ironed handkerchief to clean Trudi’s face, the girl squirmed away.
    The tables were covered with an even larger display of delicacies than on the day of her brother’s funeral, and Trudi took whatever she wanted: three stalks of juicy white asparagus, blood sausage, plum cake, a
Brötchen
, tomato salad, and two kinds of herring salad—one pink because of added beets. New amber fly strips hung curled above the tables, but already quite a few flies stuck to them. Trudi counted eleven. Two were still twirling their legs. At her brother’s funeral feast, it had been too cold for flies.
    All the guests wanted to talk to her or stroke her hair, and she felt more important than she ever had before. She even received a present—a stuffed white lamb made of real fur—from Alexander Sturm, who owned a toy factory. He had been only fourteen when his father had died as a soldier, and