TE20 Migrant Mosaics

Birke

Except, he watched her too. She would later recognize this look from the men who would watch her in bars and parties, not necessarily in order to make eye contact with her, but rather to keeptrackof her location. Sheknewtheireyes, beadyand focused, were resting on her, willing her to stay in the bar until they had the courage to come up and speak to her. Onkel Georg also kept his eyes on her location, calculating the proximity between uncle and niece and whether she could hear his conversations or not— whether she , the daughter of his dead sister, would figure out that he felt guilty for his sister’s suicide, that he felt responsible for Birke. He was scared of her . Children could not be trusted. Some of their brains, he knew, were filled with putty, toys, dinosaurs. However, others were possessed by curiosity: a sickness, whose worst symptom was observation. What could a child find out if they observed adults too closely? Were they looking for secrets? Children are the ones with secrets! They hide red balls. They have secretcrushes. They steal extrasprinkles fortheir icecreamscoops. They peak into Christmas presents the day before Christ Kind comes. The kids always hide their secrets from the adults! And the adults chase them, and sniff out their lies and deceptiveness. They interrogate and lecture the children, preparing them to be adults —that strange species that does not lie and steal and has no secrets; but, in the wee chance that an adult does in fact hold a secret, how do they hide it? Onkel Georg rattled to a set of rhythms: the gait of his walk interrupted by a slight limp; the cadence of his body bounced to familiar, appropriate gestures; the intonation of his voice played to a countryside melody, a single pastoral note. The consistency 207