The Orphanage

by Hubert Fichte

  From the convent windows Detlev heard the clattering of spoons, singing, singing on the radio. On the window sills lay arms and legs like white painted building bricks or whitewashed elephant’s legs — pink fingers and pink toes stuck out from the white wood, the pelicans’ wings on frames, wire attachments.

  His mother had said :

  — You’re not going back to that complaining music teacher in Rosenhof any more. I don’t want to say anything against him. If you meet him you must greet him politely. You can say to him — if you meet him : The paths along the Salzach are too muddy because of the flooding. He made some remarks. Who knows what he was getting at. But he’s a good recorder teacher. You can say to him, if you meet him, that you’re staying in a Catholic orphanage now. So you’d rather learn to play the recorder in a convent. You’re a convent pupil with Mother Cecilia.

  Detlev went up to the entrance. He pulled the iron handle of the bell. A man with a fat, white fist waved from above. The nun on door duty opened up. She led him up the broad stairs to the young English ladies’ workrooms.

  Detlev remembered the smell of Mother Cecilia, the smell of the classroom and of the plastic recorder as it grew warmer, of Mother Cecilia’s recorder. It smelt of ironed aprons, of salad oil, of the paper in grandfather’s desk from when he was a customs officer: Documents about the purchase of the plot of land and about paying off the mortgage on the house.

  A small crucifix was hanging in the high classroom. It hung far away. Detlev couldn’t make out whether the blood ran out of the wound in its side, whether the thorns pricked the forehead, whether the mouth became black, whether the fingers were bent over backwards with pain. While Mother Cecilia’s outstretched index finger pointed out the notes, Detlev looked at the black wooden sections of the cross, which were trimmed with silver, on which a silver figure hung, as finely worked and glittering as Aunt Hilde’s brooch, as the silver death head on the gauleiter’s cap, which Detlev had also seen only as an ornament.

  The smells grow weaker. The convent cloisters draw closer, so close that Detlev can see individual flagstones, which are almost too heavy to push away. Detlev shuts his eyes tightly. Detlev brushes his forehead along a pillar in the convent. He can turn his head only with an effort. The walls press in against him. Through a gap in the wall he sees Mother Cecilia passing by. Up the stairs, down the stairs. She goes round a corner and along a corridor. She steps out of a recess. She unlocks the doors.

  She unlocks gates. She unlocks iron gratings. She pushes curtains aside. She takes brocade cloth out of chests. She unfolds white lace cloth. She unrolls satin. She shows him a golden goblet, set with violet and green stones. She moves golden crucifixes to the front.

  — The blood is made of rubies.

  She opens silver caskets.

  — These are holy relics.

  In the caskets lay pieces of paper with writing on them, which were tied to the bones with thread. The threads passed through holes in the bones. Mother Cecilia held up a vestment by its hanger.

  — No Protestant has ever seen this before. But soon we shall take you into the Holy Catholic Church. You are going to be a priest. Perhaps one day we will consecrate you as a bishop. Mother Cecilia threw a part of the vestment over his shoulder. Mother Cecilia held rings against his hands, against his cheeks, against his neck.

  — This is emerald.

  — A devotional ring.

  — A ceremonial ring.

  — A signet ring

  — This is turmaline.

  — This is a jacinth.

  — This is a garnet.

  Mother Cecilia’s mouth no longer toot-toots into the plastic recorder to show Detlev the proper way to achieve a note. Her mouth loses the smell of socks and rhubarb. Her mouth grows as large as the main door of Our Lady’s Church. Her mouth moves: Monstrance. God. God the Father. God the Son. Lacrimae. Star of the sea, I greet thee. God. Christo. Jesus. Nails. Tongs. Chalcedony. The words hook into the eyes which link the bloody tears of the saints to one another. Mother Cecilia fades into the flames. She is borne aloft like the black paper of the seed packets, the shreds of the kite, above the autumn fires in the allotments. Mother Cecilia falls to the ground, lies there like the half burned teddy bear that grandfather had thrown out. Detlev throws it away. He pulls off the roof with the round white disc and the red cross. He pulls apart the steel and wire frames. He sweeps the plaster into a hole. He piles the pointed sacristy windows one on top of the other. He takes the hay and the plywood remnants from the loft. Detlev knocks down the little wooden house. On the balcony the fluttering of eyelashes, the twitching of pupils, the expanding of ribs as breathing grows slower. The short threads of the bird dropping are torn between Detlev’s fingers. The orphanage children, the nuns, Detlev remain fixed, like lead before it melts.

  — They’ve really all gone now. The oatmeal cake is gone. The convent of the young English ladies is gone. Steingriff too.

  This time he wasn’t walking alone. He was walking with Anna. He was wearing his brightly coloured Bavarian jacket. They were walking along a country road lined by hop poles. Women were picking the hop flowers.

  Earlier Detlev and Anna had travelled by train. His mother didn’t know anything about it.

  — Detlev’s mother is afraid.

  Detlev doesn’t know why he and Anna had been sent to Aichach.

  — Sister Silissa thinks that it’s better if I don’t say.

  — A white lie, that’s allowed occasionally. That won’t hurt your mother. Quite the opposite, you’re reassuring her. Otherwise she would only get upset.

  — Why does Detlev’s mother get upset easily?

  The country road had been mended with tar and gravel. Detlev picked up a little piece of gravel. Anna knocked it out of his hand. It fell onto the green cuff of his jacket.

  — Your soul receives a mark like that for every sin that you commit.

  Detlev was afraid in the dark. When he was alone in the dark. When his mother had left him alone or when he woke up and the others were sleeping. The jumping jacks grew giant noses. The teddy bear’s eyes swelled out of its head.

  Detlev was afraid on the way to Mrs Weindeln’s house. He wasn’t alone. The sun was in the middle of the sky. The light fell vertically onto the road, the fields, the hop poles, the women, the children.

  Anna held her head to the side and looked up.

  Her eyelids fluttered rapidly up and down The sun shone so brightly, that the landscape and the people in it appeared withered and shrunken to Detlev. The sunlight hung between him and the people like thick glass, like sewing machine oil.

  Everything was distanced, detached. Anna too. She stiffened in the light, like a figure in the picture with the three hovering women.

  Detlev looked towards the horizon, yellow in the distance above the grey painted meadows. Detlev remembered the meadows rising and falling into the distance. He was afraid that the naked dead could climb out of the roadsides ditches, or that the three women with hands full of redcurrants could come swishing past under the sun. He said:

  — I’m not afraid.

  — What are you saying?

  Detlev held onto the front of his trousers with fear.

  — Detlev, don’t touch yourself like that. That’s impure. If the sisters knew that. Sister Silissa put Erwin across her knee only the day before yesterday because he’s always touching himself there.

  — I have to pee.

  — Wait till we’re at Mrs Weindeln’s house. The hop pickers might see you.

  — Who is Mrs Weindeln?

  — A holy woman.

  — Why are we going there?

  Detlev’s mind skips over the answer. His mind rests only on the next question, which he hears once again.

  — Why is Mrs Weindeln holy?

  — She’s holy.

  Detlev hears the question from nine months before a second time.

  — Why is Mrs Weindeln holy?

  — Don’t you believe that she
’s holy?

  — I believe it. But I want to know why.

  — One must have proper faith. You’re just a Protestant after all.

  Anna stopped. She held her head to the side and looked up again and blinked. She was silent. Detlev didn’t dare to take her by the hand or say anything to her.

  The sun shone down so brightly on the landscape, that the grass appeared yellow and the asphalt white. Still holding her head to the side, Anna looked past Detlev.

  — Perhaps invisible angels are drawing her soul out now? Perhaps she’s turning into a pillar of salt, as it says in the Bible?

  Anna walked beside him

  — Mrs Weindeln is holy because in the street in front of her house she found a leaf with the Lord Jesus Christ on it. It was a leaf from a pear tree. It was half rotted away. The Lord Jesus Christ looked at Mrs Weindeln from the dirty lead as if he had been crocheted. Damn, don’t tell them at the orphanage that I said dirty leaf and Lord Jesus Christ in one breath.

  — No.

  — Swear it by the Holy Sacraments.

  — I swear.

  — Your swearing is no use at all. You don’t receive the sacraments. Anyway with a Protestant one never knows if he’s not drawing off the oath with his other hand again.

  — I want to become a Catholic.

  — Then perhaps your swearing counts half and half. If you bear false witness, you’ll go to hell.

  — I’m not bearing false witness.

  — But you can’t become a Catholic.

  — Why not?

  — Because of original sin.

  — What’s that?

  Anna didn’t know. Detlev knows now — after having repeated to himself this part of the conversation from the trip to Aichach every evening for nine months.

  — Anna doesn’t know anything.

  — You can only become a Catholic if you’re something very special — if you’re at least as holy as Mrs Weindeln.

  — How do I become holy?

  — You have to find a leaf with the Lord Jesus Christ on it.

  — Anyway Mrs Weindeln didn’t find it at all, it was the sacristan in Schrobenhausen.

  — You think you know it all.

  — I want to become holy because of something else. Perhaps there aren’t so many leaves with the Lord Jesus Christ on them. What else is holy about Mrs Weindeln?

  — She prays all day long — even when she’s cooking and eating and drinking and when she’s doing something unclean. Of course she never does anything that’s impure. She has lots of litres of holy water and many consecrated, black storm candles. She castigates herself bitterly.

  — What does castigate oneself bitterly mean?

  — So that in the hour of her death she will ascend in the flesh directly to heaven.

  — Is there no other way in which I can become a Catholic?

  — You would have to carry a thirty foot cross all round the town wall for three days. But you’re too weak to do that. Detlev knows he’s too weak, he’s too weak for a thirty foot cross, like the ones on the enamel reliefs on Calvary Hill, under which the Lord Jesus Christ, God’s son, God’s only begotten son, the Saviour, the Redeemer, the Prince of Peace, the Christ Child — almost collapsing — his face raised — is making his way.

  — I’m too weak to do that. Even Alfred is too weak to do it, or Odel, or Joachim-Devil. It takes four of the big ones to carry the soup pot into the dining room.

  Detlev picks up the leaves under the peach tree. They’re small and they all have leaf curl. Detlev collects leaves from the cinder path by the quince tree, on the slope by the birch. He holds them up against the clouds. The leaves are full of holes, black and yellow, wet. He looks to see whether the larger and smaller ribs, the decaying remains don’t form two ears, a nose, a mouth, two raised fingers, a wound on the back of the hand, thorns, blood.

  — Do you think the Holy Passion hurt a lot?

  — Quite a lot. I don’t really know. It’s so long ago.

  On the enamel relief Jesus is wearing a pink shirt. He turns his eyes towards heaven. His father looks out from behind a cloud. Judas is wearing a green shirt. His lips are black. They are stuck fast to the face of Lord Jesus Christ. Judas’s lips look like the snout of a wild pig in the zoo. The apostles all have beards. Peter draws his sword. The men-at-arms wear the armour from the Lenbach Museum.

  — The Passion must have hurt the Lord Jesus Christ a lot. But he knew that he would soon be with his Father in heaven again, while Judas is already hanging on the tree and the devils are hammering nails through every little corner of his soul. All betrayers go to hell. You too, Detlev, if you betray anything of our conversation and that I said dirty leaf and Lord Jesus Christ in one breath.

  — But Anna, they whipped him, and with spikes on the thongs, just as Kriegel does. They pressed rose stems with very long thorns onto his head. Just imagine it. This moment. Imagine they were doing it to you here. Your skin would be torn, and the thorns would pierce your bones and enter your head.

  — That’s nothing at all. You can’t possibly know everything that the Lord Jesus Christ had to suffer for our sins. They called him King of the Jews. They shouted: It serves the Jewish dog, the Jewish swine right. They pulled out finger nails, thrust him under water, crushed his feet. They bound him to an electric-shock machine.

  — All that hurt. Would you like them to hurt you? So that as a reward you’ll be allowed to sit beside God’s throne afterwards.

  — That is blasphemous pride. Don’t be sinful.

  The hop poles had come to an end. The road passed through the meadows in broad curves. Detlev and Anna’s heels, soles, pattered on the white asphalt. They followed the winding road. Bushes with limp leaves hid Detlev at the bends in the road. They didn’t talk any more. They ran down the steep slope. They didn’t laugh as they ran. Anna took Detlev’s hand. Detlev felt that her hand was warmer than his. Her head was far away behind the glass pane of an oil painting. She held her head to the side and looked up again. She resembled a nymph or a priestess on the picture of the festival behind the armchair in which his grandmother had her afternoon nap.

  Detlev imagined the holy woman’s house, which he would soon see. He saw her dressed in a sack sitting underneath a gaping straw roof. Her legs were thin. Her arms and her neck were thin. He saw her in an allotment hut beneath dangling roof board.

  Anna walked more slowly. Detlev looked down. He saw Anna’s knee socks, in turn, in step.

  Detlev dared to look down. The conversation about the Passion had overcome his fear of the bones which might stick up out of the road.

  — It’s broad daylight. There are two of us.

  Anna cried :

  — Hazel nuts.

  She let go of Detlev’s hand. She ran up a hill. She grew smaller as she ran, and the sound of her movements was lost in the distance. At the top the hazel bushes hung over the edge of the hill. Anna knelt down among the branches. She smoothed down her dress.

  — Now you’re one of the three hovering women with the little toy hammers on the picture in the church. You have a blue dress. They have a red dress.

  — There’s no picture with dresses in the church.

  — Yes there is, in the parish church.

  — I haven’t seen it. Eat some hazel nuts. You have to bite them open with your teeth.

  Anna cracked three hazel nuts. She held out to him the splintered shells full of saliva and the furry brown kernels.

  — They’re just ripe. Take some home and plant them. In a few months you can harvest hazel nuts in front of the orphanage.

  — I don’t know if I’m going to stay long in the orphanage.

  — You’ll stay. We’ve all been there for a long time. No one gets away again so quickly. Only if there’s something out of the ordinary about you. If there’s something wrong with you. If you act dirtily and behave indecently, then the people from the Party take you away. If you like eating hazel nuts, take some with you and plant them. You�
��ll see.

  — It hurt most, when he was hanging on the cross. His whole body hung by two nails through his hands. It must have taken a long time, until he died. Two nails through the hands are very painful. But no one dies from that.

  — They had hammered a nail through his feet as well. That nail helped to support the body and increased the loss of blood. Eat the nuts, don’t say any more, Detlev. You only need to look at the crucifix in the dining room. A little block is stuck under his feet. That must have held him up. And he was already exhausted beforehand. So the loss of blood from his hands and his feet was enough to cause death. Perhaps our dear Lord allowed the end to come a little faster with his son. Eat nuts, come over here right into the middle of the bushes.

  — My father is far away. I don’t know where he is. I would accept that they hurt me, until I died, if in return I could sit beside our heavenly Father in heaven.

  — Don’t blaspheme. I’ve already told you that once. Pray properly. Confess properly. No, you’re not allowed to confess. Probably they have to flay you in purgatory first, before you can enter through Heaven’s Gate.

  — Perhaps he died because they struck him in the heart?

  — No, when they stabbed him through the heart, stagnant water flowed out and clots of blood. He had already been dead for a long time. The curtain in the temple was already torn and the dead were climbing out of their graves. They only stabbed him through the heart to find out if he was dead.

  Over the hollow in the meadow from which naked men and women were clambering, hovered the three women, holding little toy hammers and iron bars in front of them. Redcurrants fell out of their hands beside the iron tools. The stagnant air beneath the leaves, the green light became thicker and heavier. The oil for the sewing machine or the glass cube, through which he spoke to Anna, cut him off completely. He saw himself like a black ant with outstretched legs — with one severed leg from the martyrdom thousands of years before

  — The amber is thousands of years old.

  in a polygon of amber on his mother’s necklace.

  — Anna, who are the three women in red hovering over the meadows in the picture in the church?