The Black Obelisk by Erich Maria Remarque

Superior allowed me to practice on the organ after mass when I felt like it. I did it on rainy days. I did not really practice, my playing was good enough to be called that; I simply played for myself, as I did on my piano, vague fantasies of one sort or another, dreams and yearning for the unknown, for the future, for fulfillment, and for my own self; to do that one does not have to play especially well. Sometimes Isabelle came with me and listened. On those days she would sit below me in the half-dark, the rain would beat against the stained-glass windows, and the organ tones would go out over her dark head—I did not know what she was thinking, and it was strange and rather touching, but suddenly in the background loomed the question Why, the screaming terror, the fear, and the silence. I felt all that and I felt, too, something of the incomprehensible loneliness of the creature when we were in that empty church with the twilight and the organ tones, only we two alone as though we were the last creatures, held together by the half-light, the music, and the rain, and nevertheless separated forever, without a bridge, without understanding, without words, with only the strange glow of the little campfires on the outskirts of the life within us which we saw and misunderstood, she in her fashion, I in mine, blind and deaf and dumb without being either dumb or deaf or blind, and for that reason much poorer and more bereft. What was it in her that had made her come up to me? I did not know and would never know—it was buried under the rubble of a landslide—nor did I understand why this strange relationship should confuse me so since I knew what was wrong with her and that she did not mean me. Nevertheless, it filled me with undefined yearning and disturbed me and sometimes made me happy and unhappy without rhyme or reason....
    A little nurse comes up to me. "Mother Superior would like to speak to you."
    I get up and follow her, feeling uncomfortable. Perhaps one of the nurses has been spying and the Mother Superior is going to tell me that I am not to speak to inmates under sixty, or she may even dismiss me, although the physician in charge has said that it is a good thing for Isabelle to have company.
    The Mother Superior receives me in her reception room. It smells of floor wax, virtue, and soap. Not a breath of spring has penetrated here. The Mother Superior, a gaunt, energetic woman, greets me. cordially; she considers me a model Christian who loves God and believes in the Church. "Soon it will be May," she says, looking me straight in the eye.
    "Yes," I reply, examining the snowy white curtains and the bare, shining floor.
    "We have been wondering whether we could not hold some May devotions."
    I am silent and relieved. "In the city churches there are devotions every evening at eight during May," the Mother Superior explains.
    I nod. I know those May devotions. Incense wells up through the twilight, the monstrance gleams, and after the devotion young people wander about in the squares for a time under the old trees where the June bugs buzz. To to sure, I never attend; but I know about them from the time before I was a soldier. That was my first experience with girls. It was all very exciting and secret and harmless. But I wouldn't think of coming up here every evening for a month to play the organ.
    "We would like to have a devotion at least on Sunday evenings," says the Mother Superior. "I mean a formal one with organ music and the Te Deum . There are simple prayers every evening for the nuns as it is."
    I reflect. Sunday evenings are tiresome in the city, and the devotion lasts barely an hour. "We can pay you very little," the Mother Superior explains. "The same as for the mass. That's probably not much now, is it?"
    "No," I say. "It's not much now. We have an inflation outside."
    "I know." She stands there undecided. "The Church's way of dealing with requests is unfortunately not adapted to these times. The Church