Christopher Kloeble - Almost Everything Very Fast

“You can read! You can read!” screamed Anni, leaping up and running to our parents. “He can read! He can read!” she cried again, and dragged Jasfe and Josfer back to me. Deep into the night I read them one word after another: “Veeeeeeeeniiiiisooon” and “Eeemmeeentaaaleeer” and “Caaaaaroooots” and “Tiiiiimm, no, thhyyyyymmme.” It became a game, the favorite game in the Habom household. After every evening meal I would sit on one side of the table, Anni, Jasfe, and Josfer on the other, and teach them the alphabet. Anni learned to read the recipes markedly faster than our parents, and Jasfe faster than Josfer. But I learned faster than all of them. As time passed I succeeded in reproducing whole sentences without a single error: “Mix ingredients into a loose dough, let rise, then knead.” Or: “Prop the oven door open slightly with the help of a wooden spoon, to allow the humidity to escape.” And my favorite of all, because of the fascination produced by the list of ingredients I couldn’t understand: “Stir in the finely diced candied orange and lemon zest.”

As soon as Anni had any difficulty spelling out a word, she’d fix her impatient eyes on me. That look! Even back then I wasn’t good at refusing her anything, and whispered the answer to her every time.

Ridiculous Twaddle

On the afternoon of my ninth birthday, I stood immersed to my knees in the Moorbach, soaping myself up, scrubbing myself down. My body was cold, but since my thoughts were back at home, I didn’t feel it. Jasfe had baked a poppy-seed cake for me, and Josfer had been working for days in his workshop. (I had my fingers crossed for a hunting bow.)

I closed my eyes to wash my face, and when I opened them again Markus was sitting on the bank before me. He was alone, and greeted me with a friendly nod; beside him lay a wooden crate, which suddenly began to shake. Markus pushed the lid aside. Amid a litter of straw and rotten vegetables, two rats were mating. “Heya,” he said. “Know what they’re doing?”

I rolled my eyes. “Making babies?”

“Good! You aren’t so dumb after all.” Markus slapped me on the back. “But I’ll bet you didn’t know that they’re brother and sister, did you?”

I slipped into my pants. “They’re just rats.”

Markus closed the crate and shook it hard. “Yep. Rats.” Then he threw it into the river. Bubbles streamed from between the slats. “I call them Jasfe and Josfer.”

“You idiot.”

“Why? They’re definitely brother and sister.”

The bubbles from the crate grew smaller and smaller; I wanted to pull it from the water. “My parents aren’t.”

Markus put a foot on the crate. “Everyone knows they are.”

“Liar.”

Now Markus stood on the crate. “I couldn’t care less if you believe it, Klöble.”

“I’m completely normal!” I shouted, louder than I’d intended, scooped up the rest of my clothes, and made off.

I didn’t see the final bubbles rising from the crate.

Jasfe and Josfer and Anni started singing a birthday song when I opened the front door of our house — and broke off as soon as they saw a half-naked boy with wet cheeks and reddened eyes. I was wrapped up in a blanket, stroked and kissed, and asked what had happened. All by itself, my voice grew higher and higher, faster and faster, as I told them about Markus, the rats and the bubbles and the Klöbles — the Klöbles above all.

My parents exchanged a troubled look, shook their heads, and said, as if with a single voice, “Children are cruel.”

“Markus told me you’re brother and sister.”

“Twaddle,” said Josfer.

And Jasfe: “Ridiculous twaddle.”

After that, the poppy-seed cake tasted so sweet, the hunting bow felt so smooth and strong in my hands, the songs so merrily sung gave my heart such a lift, that I fell into bed late that evening at peace and exhausted, and drifted off to sleep with nary a thought of Klöbles.

So as to have some time to themselves, Josfer and Jasfe occasionally sent us off to fetch fresh milk, or to hunt for mushrooms. One time they told us to go to church and say ten Hail Marys. I begged Anni to say my Hail Marys in my stead because, as I explained to her, I’d rather go and read. The truth was, I always felt like I was being watched in church — even a whisper would swell to a telltale murmur if you weren’t careful, and anyway, I couldn’t see why a prayer had to be repeated so many times. Certainly even God must get bored with it. Back at home, I slipped unnoticed through the parlor, overheard my parents’ heavy gasps, followed them, rounded the green-tiled oven, and, just as Jasfe and Josfer cried out, saw them.

It wasn’t the first time I’d witnessed it. Before they noticed me, I slipped back to the front door, opened it, and slammed it loudly shut again.

When I walked back into the parlor they’d pulled their clothes on again, and everything was where it belonged.

Jasfe cleared her throat. “Hungry?”

I nodded, as though nothing were the matter.

After Anni had returned from church and everyone had sat down at the table, Josfer and I gulped down our food. Jasfe took barely a bite. She eyed the blade of her knife, lost in thought. Anni entertained the table with a description of the beautiful stained-glass window in the church, and mentioned, by the way, that for her birthday she wanted one just like it for her bedroom.

After the last mouthful, Jasfe asked everyone to follow her outside. It was dark, and candle flames flickered like will-o’-the-wisps behind the windows of neighboring houses. Anni sat herself down between Josfer and me on the wooden bench. Jasfe remained standing. She kissed Anni and me, and folded her hands. Gently, she spoke one word after another. Carefully set one sentence after the other. With brief pauses between them. So that we’d be able follow her little speech. So that we’d have time to understand. So that we wouldn’t think anything bad. She wanted to formulate sentences better than those she’d set before her father. Perfect sentences. Accurate. And true.

“Really?” cried Anni. “You, too?”

I stood up. “Brother and sister?” I said. “Ridiculous twaddle!”

Jasfe nodded. “I know.” Her chin shook. “My two beautiful, healthy children.” She wanted to hug me. I pushed her away and she fell. Josfer grabbed me by the arm. I tore myself away, and slammed into the back of the bench, splitting the skin of my elbow, and I ran to my room, shutting the door.

Later that night, when quiet had fallen on the house, I stole out to the kitchen and took the last piece of poppy-seed cake. On the way back, I pressed my ear to the door of my parents’ bedroom. The rustling of their sheets, amused chuckles, whispers, hurried stop-start breaths — the sounds penetrated the wood and filled my imagination with pictures. I wanted to let the cake fall to the floor, wanted to fling the door open and scream, “Do you know that they call you? Rats! Filthy rats!”

But I didn’t move. I stared at the closed door, polished off the cake. And with every bite, I swallowed my rage.

From then on, for all my parents’ soft-spoken confessions, for all their sincere but irritating devotion, for all their exaggerated indulgence of my malicious commentary or loafing, I had only one answer: “Leave me alone.”

Apart from that, I didn’t speak a word.

I Love You