Christopher Kloeble - Almost Everything Very Fast

Markus tumbled away from her, clutching his head. His crying sounded like breathy, voiceless coughing. In her right hand Anni held a thick clump of his hair. She dropped it, and wiped her hand on her skirt. His howling was mixed with incomprehensible words and grunts. Anni stood, knocking the grass from her no-longer-so-violet dress. Markus was rolling back and forth, she couldn’t look away, there was no trace at all of the Markus she’d been afraid of. It was only a little boy who lay crumpled there in her long shadow’s belly, a little boy over whose cheeks ran an endless stream of tears. She might have yelled, “You deserved that!” and “Never touch me again!” and “Repent!”—but not a word passed her lips.

Anni positioned herself in front of Markus, prodded him with her foot to be sure he saw her, and shook her head; then she picked up her bucket and, the sun at her back, followed her shadow homeward.

From then on, Anni washed herself three times a day, with water and soap, thoroughly, including the place that little girls — as one of the somebodies had drummed into her — should never touch. As soon as the curly hair that proliferated wildly on her body, and in which a strangely powerful but not unpleasant odor had taken root, grew long enough that the pale skin beneath barely shimmered through, she trimmed it back. Smells, she realized, were all the stronger in places where they could conceal themselves: in hair, under the arms, between the legs, under finger-and toenails, in folds and crevices of skin. Stubborn as they were, Anni tracked them down and dislodged them with the aid of scissors, damp cloths, her comb, and the first Q-tip in Segendorf: a toothpick on which she’d impaled a single catkin.

Still, there was a place deep inside herself that she couldn’t reach. That was where the rankest odors came from. A place, she told herself, where all the bad memories and experiences sat fermenting, producing the sort of vapors that attracted bad men like Markus.

Eating helped. Apples strengthened bad smells, but a slice of bread, generously spread with butter, exorcised them for a couple of hours. Potatoes were especially efficacious, and likewise poppy-seed cakes. No somebody turned her away with a shake of the head if she brought her empty plate back to the kitchen for a second, a third, or a fourth helping. Rosy-cheeked and smacking her lips, Anni spooned up boiled pork belly, casseroles, sugared pancakes, Bavarian stew, she devoured liver dumplings and meatloaf. They tasted spicy and sweet, tender and tough, just right. They crackled, burst, gurgled as she chewed, swilled across her tongue, stuck between her teeth, and she gobbled, gulped, feeling them plunge down her throat, spread through her stomach, and fill her with warmth.

Anni and the Wishes

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

Anni and the Shape-Shifter

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.