Stella by Siegfried Lenz Page A

shoulders and said, in a tone with a touch of reproof in it, “I don’t think this is the place to talk about that.”
    Stella was letting me see that we should keep things separate, and for all her affection for me and all her understanding of what we had done, she wasn’t ready to give up authority in her own field. We were not to talk about grades, she had said, so firmly that I made no attempt to persuade her to change her mind, nor did I venture to put my hands on her hips and pull her down on my lap.
    When the telephone rang you didn’t want me to leave your study, you looked at me as you spoke, you were amused, and relieved, this was the call you had been waiting for. It seemed that Stella’s friends, who had been going to take her aboard their yacht ages ago, were ringing again to say they were on their way. As far as I could make out, they didn’t yet know what day they would arrive; the wind was against them. Butwhen I suggested going out to show her the underwater stone fields again, she said no.
    “Later,” she said. “When I come back.”
    And when we parted she said it had been a very surprising visit, certainly intending to suggest that she would rather do without such surprises in the future. In her front garden, I turned to look back, and they were both waving to me, Stella and the old radio operator.
    Alone now, alone in my classroom, I sat in front of the open drawer and looked at Stella’s picture. I decided to tell her everything she didn’t yet know about me, including the near accident by the breakwater that happened when I was checking the stones and saw a huge boulder coming down at me; it would have hit me but for the pressure wave that flung me out of its way.
    The door opened, so quietly that I didn’t even hear it. “There you are,” said Heiner Thomsen, quickly coming over to me. He had a message from Principal Block; the principal wanted to speak to me at once.
    “Do you know what it’s about?”
    “No idea.”
    “Where is he?”
    “Same place as usual.”
    I closed the drawer and slowly went downstairs to Block’s office on the ground floor. He did not come forward to meet me; sitting at his desk, he signaled for me to approach. The way he was looking at me—that penetrating, questioning look—told me at once that he expected something special of me. I felt it was humiliating to be left standing there so long in silence. His narrow lips moved, he seemed to be tasting something; finally he said, “You obviously wanted to conclude our hour of remembrance in your own way.”
    “Me?”
    “You took Ms. Petersen’s photograph away.”
    “Who says so?”
    “A number of people saw you. They were watching when you picked it up, put it under your sweater, and took it away.”
    “They must be wrong.”
    “No, Christian, they are not wrong, and now please will you tell me why you did it? Ms. Petersen was your English teacher.”
    I was prepared to admit that I’d taken Stella’s picture, but standing there in front of his desk I couldn’t think of any reason to offer him, least of all the onlyreason why I did it. After a moment I said, “All right, I’ll admit I took the photograph. I didn’t want it to get lost. Maybe I wanted to keep it as a memento of my teacher. We all liked her in my class.”
    “But, Christian, you wanted to keep the photograph for yourself, didn’t you?”
    “It ought to be in our classroom,” I said.
    He listened to me with an ironic smile, and then repeated, “In your classroom. I see. Why not in the school hall, on the board with pictures of several other former members of our staff? Why not there?”
    “I can put it there if you like,” I said. “I’ll do that right away.”
    Now Block was looking at me gravely, and I was inclined to think he knew more than I’d assumed, although I couldn’t guess how far his knowledge went. Nothing annoys me so much as being suspected of something and not knowing what. To put a stop to this