Christopher Kloeble - Almost Everything Very Fast

Mina stamped her foot — I still had hold of her leg.

“I like it when you grab my leg,” she said. “You can grab my head, too. If you want.”

I let go.

“I hold my own legs, too, sometimes. But you hold them much better. You have beautiful eyes. Did you sleep up here? There are rabid bears out here, and wolves, and …”

“Foxes.”

“Yes, exactly!” She gave me an amiable smile, and that made me relax a bit. My stomach growled.

“Why are you making that noise?”

I shrugged. “You smell like bread.”

A short time later, I was munching on rolls with bacon in them. Mina had smuggled them out of the bakery.

“Come with me. We’ll look for your sister,” said Mina.

“No, I’m never going back there.”

“But I’m not bringing you rolls every day. That’s bad for business.”

“I don’t need you.”

“But you mustn’t starve. You have beautiful eyes. Take another roll. And then we’ll look for your sister. She has wavy hair.”

“I’m staying here.”

Mina fiddled a toothpick between her rotten black teeth. Thanks to all the poppy-seed pastries in Segendorf, Carpenter Huber did a brisk trade in toothpicks of all sizes.

“I have to go home. Or else my mother will get mad. She’s the master baker. And a widow!”

“I know.”

“Did you know that she likes the Wickenhäuser?”

“Wickenhäuser?”

“A Wickenhäuser is a mortician.” Mina pricked herself in the gums. “Agh! I’m not allowed to tell about that. Now you’re not allowed to tell about it either, okay?”

“That depends.”

“Depends on what? I’m not bringing any more rolls. That’s bad for business.”

“Do you think you could bring your mother up here?”

“Only if you hold my leg again.”

Mina stretched out her left leg, and I wrapped both arms around it.

“Do you like my boots? The pretty leather came from Hunter Josfer.”

I didn’t let go. I didn’t let go, but clung tighter, closed my eyes, nestled my cheek against the leather, and inhaled deeply.

“You do that really well,” said Mina. Then she went back to the village.

As the hours went by, the oak’s shadow moved on Wolf Hill like the hand of a clock. I peered at the village over the top of the hill, afraid that Mina’s mother might have betrayed my hiding place to the mayor, or, much worse, to Pastor Meier.

Nobody came. In the evening the sun was swallowed by the moor, and thinking Mina had forgotten me, I curled myself up again and was attempting to recall what my father had told me about the edibility of moss, when someone called: “Habom! We’re coming!”

Mina ran toward me. A wheezing figure, tall for a woman but svelte for a master baker, followed, leaning for a moment on the oak’s trunk to gasp for air and throwing Mina a reproachful look. “I told you: quietly!”

“But Mama, he has to know that we’re coming.”

Master Baker Reindl was out of breath, but her appearance was even more impressive now that she was out from behind her counter. “I know someone,” she said, “who has work for you.”

“I learn fast,” I said, truthfully.

“How old are you?”

“Eleven.”

“You’d have to leave this place.”

“Good.”

“And your sister?”

I hadn’t thought about that. “Can’t she come, too?”

The master baker shook her head. “She wouldn’t make it.”

“I can help her.”

“You’re going to have to help yourself. So: you’re sure you want to go away?”

Dead certain, I wanted to say, but only nodded my head.

“A friend will pick you up tomorrow.”

Maybe, I thought, I could convince this friend to take Anni and me together.

“The Wickenhäuser is visiting,” whispered Mina.

“Shh,” went her mother. “He still owes me a favor.”

Mina giggled. “She’s always helping him explode.”

“Keep quiet! What have I told you?”

Mina rolled her eyes, and said: “The bedroom is taboo. You sleep in the bedroom, you hear what’s happening in the bedroom, but you neeee ver talk about the bedroom.”

“Do you know how Anni’s doing?” I asked.

“Someone will take care of her.” Mina’s mother stroked her gray-blond hair. “Come on, let’s get going.”

“And Habom?” Mina said.

“What?”

“The foxes. The wolves! And the bears.”

“There aren’t any wolves or bears here.”

“But foxes.”

“Mina!” said her mother.

“It’s fine,” I explained to Mina. “I like being alone.” And though I’d told her the truth, that evening it was a lie. As they were leaving I hugged Mina’s leg one last time, and when they’d already walked off a ways, I called after them: “Why?”

The master baker lifted her arms, palms upward.

“Why are you helping me?”

She pointed at Segendorf behind her with her thumb. “I know a certain master baker who, when she was young, always wanted to get away from this muckhole.”

“You can come, too.”

“No,” she pressed her daughter against her with her long, brawny arms, “Mina likes it here. Someone like Mina wouldn’t like it anywhere else.” Then they tramped down Wolf Hill together. With every step they took away from me, the sound of Mina’s prattle grew softer and softer. “WhatsamuckholeWhatsamuckholeWhatsamuckhole?”

I ran a hand through my hair, and ashes fluttered from my head. I ran to the Moorbach, slipped out of my clothes, leapt into the ice-cold water, and dunked myself again and again, scrubbing my skin with a piece of slate until it turned bright red. Jasfe and Josfer were in the air now, their dust pollinated the poppies, danced in the highest treetops, it was captured by spiderwebs, seeped into the earth, flew through the airways of the Segendorfers, penetrated their very lungs.

Auf Wiedersehen, Muckhole

I woke before sunrise, stirred by sparrows quarreling over a worm in the boughs of the oak. I felt good, lighter. Fog swirled around Wolf Hill like a milky broth, lapping shyly just short of my feet, but out on the horizon the sun was coming up, dawn light shining in shades of forget-me-not blue, lilac purple, and dandelion yellow. And the wound on my elbow was itching. So the healing process has begun, I told myself.

A chubby man with a fat, crab-red face walked up to me, wearing wrinkled, wine-colored velvet pants and a coat of the same shade stretched across his belly. I hadn’t imagined a mortician looking like that. There was a gravedigger in Segendorf, but he was gaunt and pale, and wore a mud-splattered cloak from which his hands and head protruded as if from a tortoise’s shell, and even when he was younger his facial features had been slack, supposedly as a result of the sulfurous fumes from the Segendorf graveyard.

“Let’s go,” he said to me.

“Wait! My sister has to come with us.”

“How old is she? Seven?”

“Eight.”

He shook his head. “Either you come now or both of you stay here.”

I thought about Anni, how I couldn’t just leave her alone, she was naive and much too good-natured, she needed her brother. But I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t.