Free Stones From the River by Ursula Hegi Page A

Schreberstrasse, and cut through the church square to the doctor’s stone house. Unlike most buildings in Burgdorf, the house—which had been a cloister five hundred years ago—stood not close to neighboring buildings but lay surrounded by a sheltered garden and a low brick wall with a wrought-iron gate. On the second-floor veranda,the doctor’s husband rested in his canvas chair, his round face tipped toward the sky. Orange flowers, shaped like Chinese paper lanterns, grew next to the front steps.
    The door was locked, but when Trudi pressed the recessed doorbell and kept knocking, Frau Doktor Rosen opened it.
    “I want a pill so I can grow.”
    The doctor’s hand drifted to the ornate silver pin that fastened the collar of her white jacket. “I see. Does your father know you’re here?”
    Trudi shook her head.
    “Why don’t you come inside.”
    Trudi followed the doctor through the living room into her long office that faced the back of the garden where the goldfish pond and chicken coop were. Shelves with papers and cloudy bottles covered the walls all the way to the high ceiling.
    “Sit over here.” The doctor pointed toward a leather chair and walked around her desk, where she sat down and busied herself rolling a cigarette, her elegant fingers so clumsy at getting the tobacco shreds inside the thin paper, that Trudi could have done it much faster. From watching her father, she’d learned how to. Sometimes he let her roll a whole box of cigarettes for customers who liked to buy theirs ready to smoke.
    “You see,” the doctor started, “there is no pill for growing.…”
    Eight pencils lay on her desk, and Trudi kept counting those pencils, over and over again, while the doctor’s gentle voice explained about people who were
Zwerge
—dwarfs—and said Trudi was one of them. Trudi kept counting inside her head—
eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben, acht. Eins, zwei, drei
—She laughed and shook her head. Dwarfs belonged in fairy tales, along with dragons and elves and enchanted forests. She knew the story of
Schneewittchen
. She even had a puzzle of the seven
Zwerge
who had rescued
Schneewittchen
from the evil witch—
eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben
. Seven dwarfs. But eight pencils.
Eins, zwei, drei, vier
—She knew she didn’t look like
Schneewittchen’s
dwarfs.
Zwerge
were men, squat, little men with big bellies and funny, peaked hats like egg warmers.
    “There is no girl
Zwerg
in
Schneewittchen und die sieben Zwerge”
she reminded Frau Doktor Rosen.
    The doctor lit her cigarette and said that was quite true. She looked so sad that Trudi wanted to reassure her that whatever it was that hadstopped growing inside her was just resting and would soon begin again, that it was just a matter of finding what would trigger it. But she didn’t know how to say those words aloud to the Frau Doktor because the numbers of the pencils and the numbers of the
Zwerge
kept getting mixed up inside her head, and she knew if she said anything, it would be a jumble of numbers.

three

1919-1920
    S HE DECIDED TO STRETCH HERSELF BY LOOPING HER LEGS OVER THE iron carpet rod out back, where Frau Blau beat the dust out of her rugs every Friday; but hanging upside down made her head so hot and heavy that she had to stop. Instead, she dragged the kitchen table into the open door frame to the living room, climbed up, and hung by her fingers from the molding till her arms and shoulders ached. Gradually she was able to endure it for longer spells. Some nights she had dreams in which she grew, and she’d feel an acute happiness in those dreams that would evaporate within moments after waking to her unchanged body.
    One afternoon, when she was hanging from the door frame, her father walked from the pay-library into the kitchen to make himself a cup of Russian tea. He didn’t notice her until he’d poured a bit of the strong essence that he brewed each morning, and had diluted it with hot water to suit