I tipped the cup and the clabbered milk filled my mouth, washing over my teeth and settling inside my cheeks. The cow mooed as if encouraging me to swallow. I swallowed, but the milk didn’t want to be inside me. It rushed back up, bringing with it all I had previously eaten. I had the good sense to turn away from the old woman’s sandaled feet, but when I retched, my long hair caught in the fountain spewing from my mouth. Later that night in the tent, I ran my fingers through the matted strands and my stomach heaved once more from the smell.
My father apologized again and again to the old woman in English, but she didn’t understand. She stood with her lips pressed together and her hand held out, beside her cow. My father dropped a pile of foreign coins in her leathery palm and we hurried away. I had no idea this wind-worn woman, creased and bag-eyed, standing outside her barn with her cow on a rope, would be the last person I would meet from the real world for another nine years. Perhaps if I had known, I would have clung to the folds of her skirt, hooked my fingers over the waistband of her apron, and tucked my knees around one of her stout legs. Stuck fast, like a limpet or a Siamese twin, I would have been carried with her when she rose in the morning to milk the cow, or into her kitchen to stir the porridge. If I had known, I might never have let her go.
7
At the beginning of our journey, I had been pleased it was just the two of us again. I forgot all about Oliver Hannington, the argument and the smashed glasshouse. But I was tired of walking and bored of how all the meadows and forests merged into one long deer track. Already I couldn’t remember if we had camped for two nights or three after we got off the bus. Now, we were walking downhill, using the edge of the trees to take us into the valley. My stomach was hollow, and under my rucksack my shirt stuck to my back. My legs were so heavy they might have been lumps of stone.
From inside my bag, Phyllis said, “I wonder if die Hütte is actually real. Do you think there is a Fluss so full of fish they can jump straight out of the water into our outstretched arms?”
“Of course there is,” I said.
I let the song come back to me, singing it loudly to drown out her voice. And even though he was ahead, my father joined in, clear and bold:
And I told him that I will, oh alaya bakia,
When the river runs uphill, oh alaya bakia,
And when fish begin to fly, oh alaya bakia,
Or the day before I die, oh alaya bakia.
At an unexplained distance from the haystacks, my father decided it was safe enough for us to rest. We sat side by side with our backs against the bark of a pine tree, our feet warming in the sun. I prised Phyllis out of my rucksack and bent her plastic legs so she could sit beside me. Now we were farther down the hillside, I could see into the valley. At the bottom was a river, snaking like it had done on the map, and catching the light where it jumped and tumbled over rocks. The meadow grew into tall grasses and bushes along the banks, and I thought that this must be the river that flowed past die Hütte. My father tore at the last loaf of dark bread we had brought with us from the town, and pared strips of yellow cheese with his knife. The cheese was warm and sweaty and, although I was hungry, it reminded me of the milk I had regurgitated, but I didn’t want to say anything to change my father’s mood. When he sang he was happy. My father ate with his eyes shut while I made a hollow in the soft dough, pushing the cheese inside, so that together the two became an albino vole in a mudbank. Then the piece of bread and cheese became a brown mouse with a yellow nose, which ran up and down my leg and sat on top of my knee, twitching its whiskers. I offered it to Phyllis’s pouting mouth, but she didn’t want any.
“Just eat it, Peggy,” my father said.
“Just eat it, Phyllis,” I whispered, but she wouldn’t. I looked at my father; his eyes were still shut. I picked at the crust, nibbling a few dry flakes.
Then, with an effort, my father said, “I bet you didn’t know that there are fish that can fly.”
“Don’t be silly, Papa.”
“Tomorrow at the Fluss I’ll catch a flish for our flupper,” he said, and laughed at his own joke.
“Will you teach me to swim there too? Please?”
“We’ll see, Liebchen.” He leaned down and awkwardly kissed the top of my head, but both the “darling” and the kiss were not right. Those were Ute’s things.
He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.
“Come on, Pegs. Time to get moving again.”
“I’m tired of walking,” I said.
“Just a little bit farther.” He tapped his watch and shaded his eyes at the sun. “We’ll camp down at the Fluss tonight.” With a noise that came from the very bottom of his chest, he hoisted his rucksack onto his back. While he wasn’t looking, I stuffed the bread with the piece of cheese still inside it between the roots of the pine tree.
The next morning when I woke, my father was already up. I liked to wake without moving my body to see if I could catch myself in that empty place between sleeping and waking, just as I became conscious of the world and the position of my body. My arms were flung above my head, and in the heat of the night I had pushed my sleeping bag to the end of the tent. Looking up, I could see the dots of flies that had gathered, bumping against the ridge pole, hoping to find a way out.
“They should crawl through the holes you made with the fire,” Phyllis said in my ear. She lay beside me, her rigid hands digging into my shoulder. My nightie was sticking to me and there was sweat around my forehead and the back of my neck. While we had been away from home I had taken to wearing the blue balaclava at night, despite the heat. It had been the first thing I had packed when I had heard my father’s whistle back in London. Omi had knitted it and a pair of matching mittens from a blue jumper that I had when I was a baby. She had unravelled it, pulling at the live and wriggling wool, and with German words I couldn’t understand she showed me how to hold my hands out so the wool caught and wound around them. Omi was my grandmother, and for a long time I thought she was only that. I remember the moment when I realized she was, or had been, other things too—a daughter, a wife, and, most difficult to comprehend of all, Ute’s mother. I couldn’t imagine Ute having a mother, or any relations—she was too complete. Ute said that Omi was angry because I didn’t know any German and couldn’t speak to her.
“She blames me,” Ute said.
“Eine fremde Sprache ist leichter in der Küche als in der Schule gelernt,” said Omi, winding the wool.
“What did she say?” I asked Ute.
She sighed and rolled her eyes. “She says I should have taught you German in the kitchen. She is a silly old woman whose brains have shrunk.”
I looked at Omi, wrinkled and brown like a walnut. I imagined her brain, also wizened, rattling around inside her skull.
“In the kitchen?” I persisted.
Ute huffed. “She means I should have taught you at home when you were young, but it is not her business and it is a good thing you don’t know German. Omi tells lies and because you cannot understand her, you cannot understand them. I told her that she tells too many stories.” Ute put on a wide smile for Omi, but the old lady frowned and I thought perhaps she wasn’t as stupid as Ute believed.
I liked to watch Omi’s face while she worked and talked to me. Sometimes she grew wistful and the wool slackened. Then something in her story would agitate her. She would repeat a phrase over and over, staring me in the eyes as though that might make me understand. If Ute was passing, I begged her to translate, desperate to know what my grandmother thought was so important. But Ute would just roll her eyes again and say Omi was only telling me not to trust the stranger in the woods, or to be sure to always carry breadcrumbs in my apron pockets, or to stay away from the wolf’s teeth.