“It’s dark,” she said.
“I know,” I said, rolling outside and beckoning her to follow.
She remained standing at the door, watching me.
“Come on,” I called.
Even back then my eyes were well past their prime, but unless I was very much mistaken she hesitated slightly at the threshold, before disappearing.
From then on I invited her each evening to come into the orchard with me. And each evening she turned me down—but stood there looking after me a little longer every time.
Almost two months passed before, one night when the crescent moon was especially thin, she took a first step outside.
“One more,” I encouraged her. “Just a little one.”
So we edged our way forward, night after night. The other nuns trusted me, and gave me a free hand. In my thirty-six years there I’d never once tried to approach one of them, and they had no idea what I’d been like before. After so much time, I barely knew myself.
Winter had long since arrived, and there were no more apples to pick, when Alfonsa finally stepped all the way out to my wheelchair.
“Congratulations,” I said.
“How did you know I could do it?”
“I didn’t know,” I said. “But I figured, when the air is black, it swallows up space, the whole sky, and makes the outdoors feel much smaller.”
She looked around. “It’s as if I were in a room. A very, very big room.”
“What you decide to believe is always the truth.”
“Thank you, Ludwig.” Even now, there was no emotion visible in her face. “I owe you one.”
“Nonsense,” I said. “You’re doing better. That’s reward enough.”
“I owe you one,” she repeated seriously.
“What could a young woman like you do for a sixty-eight-year-old?”
Alfonsa suppressed a comment. “Don’t you want anything? Anything at all? There must be something.”
I replied: “Uhh-ehh.”
I should have simply asked her for a smile. Instead I suggested she accompany me on my nightly rides. Around the convent. Counterclockwise.
We kept our conversations superficial, out of fear of giving too much importance to this relationship of ours. We were bound by our common experience of how dangerous it was to let someone get too close to you. That experience had brought us both to this place. We were outsiders at Saint Helena, we felt we’d been cheated out of a better life, but had come to terms with it. In another world, we would have been happier. In this one, we were learning to treasure the greatest possible happiness available to the unhappy: contentedness.
For my sixty-ninth birthday, in May 1982, Alfonsa gave me a cassette with her favorite songs by Frank Sinatra, and I had to confess to her that I didn’t own a tape player, whereupon she brought me her own after our walk that night, and plugged it in beside my bed and pressed “play.” And guess who sighs his lullabies through nights that never end, my fickle friend, the summer wind.
We sat facing each other, I on the wheelchair, she on the stool she always used when I gave her chess lessons, and listened to the music. Alfonsa’s upper body was leaning a bit to the side, her hands were folded in her lap, her gaze fixed on the turning cogs in the cassette player. Even when she was more or less relaxed, she lived up to her name. I suddenly felt that she felt I was watching her, and I shut my eyes so that our gazes wouldn’t meet, and made as if I were concentrating on the music. Now I could feel that she was watching me, and didn’t dare open my eyes until the last track on side A ended with a heavy click. Alfonsa stood, flipped the tape to side B, pressed “play,” and asked, before Frank Sinatra started in again, if she could lie down next to me on the bed, just lie there next to me. I smiled for the both of us and said that wouldn’t work, and she nodded immediately, as if she’d expected that answer, and we went on listening. Take (get a piece of) my (these) arms, I’ll never use them.
The next day when she came to make my bed, Alfonsa found my door locked. She knocked and called my name, but I simply stared at the shadow moving in the gap between the door and the floorboards, and said nothing. After a while she gave up and moved away, and I found the Mother Superior and asked her to assign me a different nun. It wasn’t Alfonsa’s fault, I explained, she simply reminded me of someone I didn’t want to be reminded of. I didn’t say that that someone was myself. The Mother Superior seemed to understand, and I left her feeling I’d done the right thing.
But that same evening, after dinner, Alfonsa followed me back to my room. “Why are you doing this?”
I acted surprised. “What have I done?”
“From tomorrow on I’m assigned to the kitchen.”
“Well?”
“Did you think I wanted something from you? Because of yesterday?”
“Interesting thought. How did you hit on that?”
“You’re old enough to be my grandfather!”
“Exactly.”
I’d never seen her so upset. Her lips were a thin, straight line, and so many unspoken emotions were swirling in her eyes that I would have liked to spend longer staring into them, reading them.
Instead, I asked, “Is there anything else?”
She left my room without another word, and I turned back to the window, through which a sudden gust of wind drove a flurry of light-pink petals. Footsteps approached, and even before I could turn again Alfonsa was standing beside me, leaning down, giving me a rough kiss. Then she plucked an apple blossom from my hair, showed me her smirk for the first time, and left.
I didn’t lock my door that evening. After midnight, when I was already stretched out in bed, I heard the door open, then close again. In the dark I couldn’t distinguish a thing. The sound of bare feet on a stone floor. The covers were lifted and a cool, slender body wrapped in a nightgown snuggled up to me. She laid her hand on my chest. Her breath grazed my throat.
“Sleep well,” she said.
“You, too,” I said.
The next morning I woke alone. I washed and dressed myself, wondering if I’d imagined it all.
At breakfast in the dining hall Alfonsa sat down across from me. “Sleep well?” she asked.
I looked at her. Her face was as expressionless as ever.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes. Very well, actually.”
She smirked again. “Me, too.”
This smirk was enough to make me ask myself, ask myself seriously, why on earth I hadn’t ever wanted this. Soon she visited me every night. Until I couldn’t fall asleep without feeling her body next to mine. Like teenagers we hid under the blankets and laughed into the pillows and whispered stories to each other and kissed with half-opened eyes. As aware as we were of the impossibility of our relationship, we were just as aware of the possibility of a bit of happiness. Probably, I thought, it would be the last of my life. Who would have chosen to forgo that?
“Can you feel that?” she asked.
I lay in the bathtub, it was nighttime, the only light came from a solitary candle doubled by my shaving mirror, and Alfonsa, who sat by the tub on the chess stool in her nightgown, rolled up one sleeve, dipped her hand into the water, and touched my ankles.
I shook my head.
Her hand wandered up my leg.
“What about that?”
Again, I shook my head.
“And that?”
This time I nodded.
Whenever we encountered each other by day in the hallways of Saint Helena, we’d make a promise with a nod of the head, one we’d fulfill when we met in secret after dark. It had been so many years; since my accident, I hadn’t touched a single woman like that. So I was all the more amazed at how simple and satisfying it was. Alfonsa came to appreciate the advantages of an experienced man, and I to appreciate her smirk in all its variations. Making love with her was like a gentle dance, not especially spirited, but proceeding in small, even steps, always looking each other in the eye. In me she saw her second happiness, and in her I saw my fourth l
ove. I revealed my real name to her, and she her history to me. And it was only in the mornings, when her hair, so seductively red in the glow of each evening’s candles, turned suddenly traitorous by daylight, so that I had to spend hours searching my mattress for strays that might give us away—it was only then that I asked myself where all of this was leading.
End
It ended as it does so often: with a beginning. During our last evening stroll, in September 1982, Alfonsa told me that she was two months pregnant. As I didn’t immediately react to the news, she said, “You don’t seem surprised.”
I was sixty-nine years old, the son of twins, I came from a town where such terrible things had happened that nobody used its old name anymore, a Frenchwoman had turned me into a cripple, and last but not least, I was the father of innumerable children; I wasn’t so easily surprised any longer. But I didn’t want to give her the impression that I was going to abandon her now, and so I said, “Of course I am.”
Alfonsa looked at me from the corner of her eye, walking silently by my side. I felt sorry for her; she was so young, so inexperienced.
We stopped before the convent’s main entrance. I tried to sound as sensitive as possible. “We have to tell the others.”
And there, after months of waiting, I saw her smile, not smirk, for the first and only time. A pitying, honest, unlovely smile that I’d rather not have seen. “I already have.” She crouched down and took my hands. “We’ll definitely find a nice place for you.”
“For me?”
“There are a couple of good nursing homes in Bavaria.”
I pulled my hands away. “I’ve lived at Saint Helena for almost forty years!”
“You can’t stay here. How could the sisters tolerate a man in their midst who’d gotten one of them pregnant?”
“I don’t know,” I said, detecting a sulky tone in my voice I didn’t like. “But that’s my child as well.”
“Julius,” even considering it was her, she spoke with disturbingly little emotion, “do you want to raise this child? Do you want to change its diapers? Feed it? Do homework with it?”
“No.”
“Neither do I,” said Alfonsa, sitting down on the step before the door, leaning back, supporting herself with her elbows, and looking at the sky. Suddenly she didn’t seem so young and inexperienced anymore. “I might have, once. But if I’ve learned anything, it’s that I’m not really cut out to be a mother.”
“Abortion?” I asked.
“Adoption,” she replied.
All of a sudden I felt very old and slow. “You’re going to give it away, just like that?”
“Him. I’m going to give him away,” she said. “We’re having a son.”
“A son,” I said, more to myself than to her.
Alfonsa stood and brushed the dust from her cloak.
“Wait,” I said. “Maybe there’s another way.”
She looked at me in silence.
“Do you know,” I asked, “what a Most Beloved Possession is?”
On April 5, 1983—as I lay in my new, distinctly more humble room at the Zwirglstein, staring up at the plasterboard ceiling, and began, for the first time in decades, to scratch my elbow—our son was born. The infirmary at Saint Helena was white like apple blossoms. The little scarlet head of our son formed the only contrast—a drop of blood in the snow. One of the wrinkles on his forehead was so deep, it was as if he’d been brooding for nine long months over when and how he’d finally be able to give that imprisoning belly the slip. Because of that thoughtful crease, Alfonsa named him Albert. Her cheeks were red, but they were no match for his—flushed as a putto’s in a painting. And Albert, our Albert, didn’t scream at all, because he had no reason to. After all, he was there with his mother, in the safest place in the world.
PART IX
On Mothers and Fathers
Alfonsa
Albert walked slowly toward Alfonsa, and as he approached her told himself that he was approaching the woman who’d brought him into the world; he attempted to see that woman in her, to find some evidence of it in her gaze, but as hard as he tried, he couldn’t manage it. Before him stood Sister Alfonsa.
He stopped short before stepping on her shadow on the floor; he groped for words; he couldn’t find them.
Alfonsa moved to the elevators and pressed the button. “I want you to meet somebody.”
Albert didn’t move.
“We’re almost there,” she said.
“How come?” He looked upward. “Who lives here?”
“You’ll see.”
Now he stepped onto her shadow, and said, “Fred isn’t doing well.” He ran off, so that she wouldn’t notice his tears, toward the exit.
“He isn’t your father,” Alfonsa called after him, drawing the attention of the old couple at the kiosk, who were watching them now from over their trail map.
Albert stopped and pretended he was scratching his forehead, so as to wipe the tears away unnoticed.
The elevator doors opened with a bright pling.
“Come on,” said Alfonsa. “I even have a handkerchief for you.”
The elevator was small for the two of them. Albert refused Alfonsa’s handkerchief and pressed himself into one corner and focused on a pale yellow leaf on the floor, with a tear in its side that resembled a gaping beak. He struggled not to think about the fact that Alfonsa was the woman he’d been searching for all his life.
“Will this,” he said, and had to clear his throat, “will this take long?”
“Fred will be able to hold on without you for a few more minutes.”
“He needs me.”
“Actually, I believe it’s the other way around.”
Albert stepped on the leaf on the floor and ground it beneath his heel. “I never saw him as my father.”
“Just because you never addressed him as Father doesn’t mean you didn’t see him that way.”
Albert didn’t know how to respond to that.
They left the elevator on the third floor and walked through a rectangular glass tunnel that connected the building’s two sections.
Albert said, “Wait a minute,” reached into his pocket, took the makeup compact, opened it, and showed her the hair: “Is that yours?”
“I don’t know. I never knew.”
Albert looked at it for a moment. Then he snapped the compact shut, and tossed it into a trash bin.
An Old Man
They stepped into a common room painted in warm colors, where a few patients lingered, reading newspapers, playing Scrabble, and following a TV program about the fall of the Berlin Wall. The place smelled like vanilla tea.
Alfonsa knocked at the door of room 341, and without waiting for a response, walked in, gesturing for Albert to follow.
Hardly any light penetrated the drawn curtains, and it took a moment before Albert’s eyes adjusted. The first thing he saw was a framed picture hanging on an otherwise empty wall. It was a black-and-white aerial photograph of Königsdorf, showing the farmhouses huddling close to the church.
On the opposite side of the room there stood a hospital bed, in which a man lay whom Albert had never seen before. A tube connected his left arm to an IV bag. In the dimness it was hard to tell his age, but it was clear that the bulk of this man’s life was now behind him. His body seemed as delicate as a child’s, and sank into the pillow and mattress; shimmering silver hair grew from his scalp, his skin was the light-gray color of dirty snow. His deep-set milk-white eyes scanned the room: “Who’s there?”
“It’s me.” Alfonsa opened a window slightly, settled herself on a stool beside the man, and took his hand. “It helps if you touch him while you’re talking,” she said to Albert.
“How well can he see?”
She shook her head. “Detached retinas.”
“I’m blind, not deaf!” said the man. “Who’s there?”
“Julius,” explained Alfonsa, “I’ve brought along a friend.”
“What kind of friend
? Since when do you bring friends with you?”
Albert noticed that one of Julius’s elbows was bandaged.
“We’re in a good mood today, aren’t we?” said Alfonsa.
“Don’t talk to me like I’m an old man.”
“You are an old man.”
“So what if I am?” Julius pointed to his cheek. “Give me a kiss.”
Alfonsa exchanged a look with Albert. “Later.”
“What,” said Julius, “you’re embarrassed in front of your friend?” He smiled. “Have you told him that we were lovers, once upon a time?”
“That was long ago.”
“Only nineteen years,” said Julius. “I haven’t forgotten.”
“Do you have children?” asked Albert.
Julius made a smacking noise, as if he were trying to taste something. “Sounds young, this friend of yours,” he said to Alfonsa. “Have you seduced him?” And without waiting for her answer, he said in Albert’s direction, “I know all about that.”
“Do you have children?” Albert repeated, and saw how Julius held Alfonsa’s hand somewhat tighter.
“He isn’t especially polite, though, your friend. He still hasn’t introduced himself.”
“My name isn’t important,” said Albert, before Alfonsa could say anything.
Julius smacked his lips. “Afraid I won’t be able to keep your affair to myself?”
Alfonsa sighed.
Albert moved a step closer to the bed. “How long have you been here now?”
“My turn first, my nameless friend: how do you know our pretty little nun?”
“I was brought up at Saint Helena.”
“An orphan! So we have something in common.” Musingly, Julius brought his free hand across to the bandaged elbow, and immediately Alfonsa grabbed it and laid it back in its place; it looked habitual, as though she’d been doing it for years. “Though I didn’t have the luxury of growing up in an orphanage like Saint Helena. Did you know that Alfonsa was one of its founders?”
“No.” Albert glanced at Alfonsa, who dodged his look. “I didn’t know that.”
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