Free Ursula Hegi The Burgdorf Cycle Boxed Set: Floating in My Mother's Palm, Stones from the River, The Vision of Emma Blau. Children and Fire by Ursula Hegi

gazing at the streaks of sun that broke the waves into layers brighter than the sky.
    “I didn’t know anyone else saw the river like this,” he finally said.
    That evening, when my mother tucked me in, I asked if she liked Matthias.
    She nodded, but then she said something that puzzled me. “He has made some difficult choices.”
    Matthias’s apartment had the same amount of space as my mother’s studio, but it was divided into three cramped rooms. Most of his living room was taken up by his piano, which he played for me, his long fingers gliding through Mozart’s piano concertos and Schumann’s etudes. He collected books of photographs from countries all over the world. In his apartment I saw the fjords of Norway, the great wall of China, the beaches of Bermuda, and the glaciers of the Italian Alps. On his walls he had Japanese charcoal drawings of birds and flowers. He talked about wanting to take a train south through Austria and into Italy, about flying to Japan or Africa.
    “I can’t imagine staying in Burgdorf forever,” he said and ran his hands across the globe he’d set on top of the piano. “With all there is to see …”
    He often walked as though he were tired, his limbs moving as though it cost him enormous effort—except when his friend Herr Faber came over with a bottle of wine or abox of chocolate-covered hazelnuts. Then his motions became hurried and he’d usher me out the door, glancing at his friend as if worried he might resent my being there.
    Herr Faber was a violinist with the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra. He didn’t like kids. I didn’t know what he liked, because he looked so glum with his dark eyebrows and mustache. I wondered why Matthias kept inviting him; he always seemed unhappy after Herr Faber left. Sometimes, he’d have a bruise on one cheek or his arm; once, his right eye was swollen shut.
    “It’s nothing,” he’d whisper when I asked. “I was careless.”
    But I knew his injuries had something to do with his friend, though I couldn’t imagine Matthias fighting. I thought about telling my father so that he could forbid Herr Faber to come into our house, but I didn’t ask for his help because I was afraid he might not let me see Matthias anymore.
    One Saturday afternoon in July, after Herr Faber and Matthias had sent me away, I climbed the stairs to the attic. Lying flat on the dusty floor, I pressed one ear against the boards. From the rooms below, the sound of men’s voices floated up, but the words did not separate themselves enough to distinguish; they drifted through like one huge blanket that settled around me, weighing me down. Herr Faber’s voice was louder.
    “Why do you let him come back?” I’d asked Matthias once when his left eye was swollen shut.
    He’d winced as if I were the one who’d hurt him. “He’s my friend, Hanna.” He’d lifted his fingers to his forehead, and I’d seen the headache taking shape behind his eyes, dark and sudden.
    I wondered if my mother could hear them in her studio, but the stairwell divided the two apartments. I pictured Herr Faber leaving and getting run over by a streetcar like Monika Klein, who’d been killed two years before whenshe and I were in the fourth grade. The wheels of the streetcar would cut across Herr Faber’s chest or maybe his throat. Either way—he’d stop breathing. For a while Matthias would be sad, but I’d visit him, bring him travel books from the church library, and make us lemonade.
    I got up and brushed off my wrinkled skirt. Walking over to the front window, I unlatched it and pushed it open. Sunlight streamed in, magnifying the motes of dust that circled me like a second skin. A pigeon with a straw in its beak flew off and landed in the cherry tree in front of the Talmeisters’ house across the street. As usual, Frau Talmeister leaned from her living-room window, supported by a wide pillow. Propped on the sill next to her lay her eight-month-old son, Helmut. She fed him with a