Christopher Kloeble - Almost Everything Very Fast

“Please don’t do that,” said Albert.

Fred turned back to him. “What?”

“Move.”

“You don’t need to be afraid of heights yet, Albert.” Fred pointed in the direction they were headed. “Up there it’s much higher!”

“How comforting.”

They reached the first support tower, and the gondola swayed. Albert slid down his pole to the floor. Even a five-foot bunk bed at Saint Helena had left him feeling uneasy. How many feet from the ground were they now? Too many, in any case. Albert pulled out the makeup compact and held the hair up against the light. A thin, sinuous rift in the white sky.

“You still have that with you,” Alfonsa said, more to herself than to him.

As a kid he’d sometimes imagined that his mother, wherever she was, looked up at the sky just as much as he did, that they were both looking at the same thing, that a cloud hanging above her would soon be casting its shadow on him.

“Klondi says you’re a good son,” said Alfonsa.

“She’s wrong about that,” he said.

“He is a good son. Don’t you think so, Fred?”

“Albert is a totally good son,” said Fred.

Albert looked over at Fred. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

Albert didn’t want to ask Fred, but he had to. “To whom?”

“To whom what?”

“To whom am I a good son?”

“That’s easy!”

“Oh really?”

“Yes! You’re the son of your mom, and the son of your dad!”

Albert laughed. “So easy.” He slipped the hair back into the makeup compact.

The gondola slowed, and slid jerkily into the rectangular maw of the mountaintop station. The doors were unlocked and opened. Fred jumped from the gondola, Albert climbed out cautiously behind him, and Alfonsa followed. They were greeted by a blast of damp cold, and by the cable car’s operator, who shook his head and said: “You picked a fine day for it. There’s nothing to see.”

“Don’t be so sure about that,” replied Alfonsa.

They left the station and followed a well-trodden path. High fog hid the view of the valley. Which was fine by Albert. Bright-green letters on a dark-green sign: Alp-View Senior Residence, 0.2 km. Fred was taking smaller steps than usual, Alfonsa walked beside him, and Albert strayed off ahead. Only a measly three hundred steps to go! How many he’d already taken in quest of his mother. He thought of Fred’s attic and the Hansel and Gretel crumbs, he thought of the gold in the tin box and the silent cassette tape and the lists of green cars, he thought of the streets of Königsdorf, of the flyers taped to every front door, he thought of Klondi’s garden and the Hofherr and the rectangular sewer pipes, he thought of Saint Helena and the chessboard of stained boxwood and of darts and shoelaces and the backs of heads, he thought of Tobi’s feet and Clemens’s house and Gertrude’s neighing, he thought about Klondi (Mothers are overrated, Albert. If you ask me, you can count yourself lucky that you grew up without one) , he thought of Alfonsa (What are you looking for elsewhere that isn’t here?) , he thought of Violet (You don’t mean anything to this woman. Otherwise you’d have heard from her long ago. She’s not your problem. Forget about her, start worrying about your own life) , he thought of Fred in the Speedster, with his encyclopedia, in the cemetery, with his diving goggles, in “The Day the Bus Attacked the Bus Stop,” and he thought of a woman whose name he still didn’t even know.

“I don’t feel good,” said Fred, as they reached the old-folks home: a modern building, reminiscent of a hotel, its front side of slanted glass in which the sky was reflected.

“Neither do I,” said Albert, pointing to a wooden bench cut from a bisected tree trunk by the front door. “Should we rest for a minute?”

Alfonsa said she would go ahead and wait for them at the reception. Glass sliding doors closed behind her.

Fortunately, Fred followed Albert and lowered himself to the bench. He pulled his hat down onto his forehead and slumped over. Every part of him was pointing earthward, he seemed weaker than ever before. Albert helped him take off the backpack, slipped it under his head, and closed the collar of the poncho. Within seconds Fred seemed to be asleep. His chest rose and fell evenly. For a moment Albert let his hand rest on Fred’s shoulder, feeling the comforting warmth of his body. At once Albert realized how quiet it was in his head. No thoughts.

When he let go of Fred, it felt as if he were saying farewell.

The air in the entry hall smelled of iodine. To Albert it felt brighter inside, as though the glass walls strengthened the daylight. His footsteps echoed. No one was staffing the reception desk. At a kiosk a pair of old folks in bright blue anoraks were examining a sodden trail map.

Alfonsa waited by a white column. She wasn’t smirking now. Albert went over to her, and before he could say anything she lifted her arms and removed the black veil. He didn’t move. Her hair was done up in a French braid; it was graying already at the temples, but otherwise the color was still strong. It glowed a fiery red.

Grease, Dried Flowers, and Bitterness

Nathaniel Wickenhäuser, whose love for me was greater than my own for him, had folded up his mother’s bridal gown for me — presumably with his eyes shut, so that its whiteness wouldn’t blind him. It had smelled as Else would have, were she still alive: of grease, dried flowers, and bitterness. I can’t burn you, he must have thought. I can’t throw you out. But I can’t keep you, either. So you’re going to be a gift.

The next morning, in the bus, the bundle lay on the empty seat beside me. During the whole course of the trip, I didn’t touch it, but stared out the window: the mountains grew bigger, the forests thicker, while the road dwindled. When the bus reached my stop, I left the bundle where it was. Gifts from liars I could do without.

“Wait!” a woman shouted, holding the package aloft. “You’ve forgotten something!”

I struggled to smile, and thanked her.

“Somebody sure is lucky today,” she said.

“The question is, who?” I answered, stuffing the bundle into my travel bag.

That’s where it stayed for the moment, sharing the space with my provisions. It first saw the dull light of Segendorf when the innkeeper emptied the bag onto the floor of the barn on the moor, pulled it over her head, and announced, “Now you can do what you like with me!”

Which is exactly what I did, though the innkeeper had presumably had something else in mind: I chased her out of the barn. “I want nothing more to do with you!” I shouted, bringing the wench to tears, something that no one had managed to do for a good long time.

The very same night I had secretly watched my sister dancing for Arkadiusz, I set out once more for their house. The innkeeper had confirmed that it was she who lived there. This time I had Wickenhäuser’s present with me. Anni’s wedding was set to take place the next day, the innkeeper had told me, and if the bundle contained what it smelled like, then it was meant for her. I knocked, and Anni opened the door and shook her head, and I couldn’t say a single word. All of a sudden I saw our old house looming before me. Behind a second-story window Jasfe and Josfer lay atop and within each other. Anni, little Anni, stood in front of the house with the torch in her hand. She stretched out her arm and painted a streak of fire across the front door. Flames leapt up across the wooden walls and wrapped the structure in a gleaming coat of burning colors. The wall of flame built higher and higher, till it reached the window behind which Josfer and Jasfe screamed. Our parents pressed themselves against the pane. Howling. Out of lust, or despair, or who knew what.