been prepared to accord her an “honorable” secularization (all this Rahel to B.H.T., verbally); butnot only had she accepted the demotion as a promotion: she had also felt and regarded and seen her floor duties as offering far better opportunities for applying her doctrines than did the classroom. Since the year in which her difficulties with the Order happened to occur was 1933, one had refrained from actually expelling her, hence she still had five more years as a “toilet attendant” (Rahel on Rahel to B.H.T.).
The obtaining of cleaning materials, toilet paper, antiseptics, and even bed linen, etc., was reason enough for her to go by bicycle from time to time to the neighboring medium-sized university town, where she spent many hours in the university library, later many days in that well-stocked antiquarian bookstore where she struck up a platonic but passionate friendship with this B.H.T. He allowed her to browse to her heart’s content among his boss’s stock, even placing at her disposal—contrary to regulations—a hand catalogue for internal use only; he allowed her to read in numerous corners, even letting her have some of the coffee from his Thermos flask, indeed now and again, when her absorption seemed unduly prolonged, even giving her one of his sandwiches. Her main interest was pharmacological, mystical, and biological literature, also herbal lore, and in the space of two years she had developed into a specialist in a delicate area: that of scatological aberrations, insofar as these could be explored in the mystical literature so plentifully represented in the antiquarian bookstore.
Although everything—everything—has been done to clarify Sister Rahel’s background and origin: beyond the statements made by B.H.T., Leni, and Margret there was no more to be learned; a second and third visit to Sister Cecilia brought to light no further information on their former sister-nun; all that the Au.’s persistence accomplished was that Sister Cecilia blushed—it is freely admitted that the blushing of an old lady of over seventy with milky tones in her skin is not an unpleasant sight. A fourth attempt—the Au. is persistent, as can be seen—was thwarted at the convent entrance: he was no longer admitted. Whether he willsucceed in finding out more in the Order’s archives and personnel files in Rome depends on whether he can afford the time and expense of the trip and—most important of all—whether he will be granted access to the Order’s secrets. There remains the duty to recall the situation as it was in 1937–38: an eager little nun, with a mania for mysticism and a mania for biology, suspected of scatology, accused of biologism and materialistic mysticism, sitting in the dark corner of the antiquarian bookstore, is offered coffee and sandwiches by a young man, a (then) not even remotely bald or greasy young man. This genre picture, worthy of perpetuation by a Dutch master of the stature of a Vermeer, would require, in order to do justice to the political situation at home and abroad, a scarlet background, blood-flecked clouds, if it is borne in mind that somewhere the Storm Troopers were always on the march and that the threat of war was greater in 1938 than in the following year when it actually did break out; and even if this passion of Rahel’s for digestive matters is found to be excessively mystical, her preoccupation with internal secretion (to the point where she yearned to discover the precise composition of that substance known as sperm) bizarre—
one
thing must be said for her: it was she who, on the basis of her private (forbidden) experiments with urine, gave the young book-antiquarian the advice which enabled him to evade service in the German Army, by explaining to him in detail, while he drank his coffee (with which she occasionally spattered priceless antiquarian rarities—her respect for the outward appearance of any book was slight), what he must drink, eat, and swallow in
The obtaining of cleaning materials, toilet paper, antiseptics, and even bed linen, etc., was reason enough for her to go by bicycle from time to time to the neighboring medium-sized university town, where she spent many hours in the university library, later many days in that well-stocked antiquarian bookstore where she struck up a platonic but passionate friendship with this B.H.T. He allowed her to browse to her heart’s content among his boss’s stock, even placing at her disposal—contrary to regulations—a hand catalogue for internal use only; he allowed her to read in numerous corners, even letting her have some of the coffee from his Thermos flask, indeed now and again, when her absorption seemed unduly prolonged, even giving her one of his sandwiches. Her main interest was pharmacological, mystical, and biological literature, also herbal lore, and in the space of two years she had developed into a specialist in a delicate area: that of scatological aberrations, insofar as these could be explored in the mystical literature so plentifully represented in the antiquarian bookstore.
Although everything—everything—has been done to clarify Sister Rahel’s background and origin: beyond the statements made by B.H.T., Leni, and Margret there was no more to be learned; a second and third visit to Sister Cecilia brought to light no further information on their former sister-nun; all that the Au.’s persistence accomplished was that Sister Cecilia blushed—it is freely admitted that the blushing of an old lady of over seventy with milky tones in her skin is not an unpleasant sight. A fourth attempt—the Au. is persistent, as can be seen—was thwarted at the convent entrance: he was no longer admitted. Whether he willsucceed in finding out more in the Order’s archives and personnel files in Rome depends on whether he can afford the time and expense of the trip and—most important of all—whether he will be granted access to the Order’s secrets. There remains the duty to recall the situation as it was in 1937–38: an eager little nun, with a mania for mysticism and a mania for biology, suspected of scatology, accused of biologism and materialistic mysticism, sitting in the dark corner of the antiquarian bookstore, is offered coffee and sandwiches by a young man, a (then) not even remotely bald or greasy young man. This genre picture, worthy of perpetuation by a Dutch master of the stature of a Vermeer, would require, in order to do justice to the political situation at home and abroad, a scarlet background, blood-flecked clouds, if it is borne in mind that somewhere the Storm Troopers were always on the march and that the threat of war was greater in 1938 than in the following year when it actually did break out; and even if this passion of Rahel’s for digestive matters is found to be excessively mystical, her preoccupation with internal secretion (to the point where she yearned to discover the precise composition of that substance known as sperm) bizarre—
one
thing must be said for her: it was she who, on the basis of her private (forbidden) experiments with urine, gave the young book-antiquarian the advice which enabled him to evade service in the German Army, by explaining to him in detail, while he drank his coffee (with which she occasionally spattered priceless antiquarian rarities—her respect for the outward appearance of any book was slight), what he must drink, eat, and swallow in
Similar Books
