even be a little protective of Anna. The day before she died, Anna’s sister had been swinging her legs to and fro as she perched on the edge of her bed and they had pretended that her legs were little wild creatures that Anna had to catch, but once the wiggling feet had been caught and shoed and the laces were tied, Anna’s sister stood up but was breathing oddly and sweating, and her face was flushed. The following day, her bed was empty, the bedspread stretched flat and tightly tucked in. They had removed all the pictures, and the books from the shelves, and even the ‘secret box’ where Anna’s sister had kept her pretty things, her rings and necklaces, together with saved-up letters and a diary. It seemed they felt nothing of hers could remain, now that she was dead.
Whosoever doth not bear his own cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. So therefore whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.
She had told Doctor Jekelius of a memory of the funeral. Anna and her mother, who had been deeply affected by her daughter’s death, were leaving the church together, walking arm in arm. Above them the mighty church bells had swung and hammered and banged incessantly with their massive brass clappers. She used to say that the bells had called her into service, but at heart she knew that nothing so uplifting had taken place. It had been a dreadful moment. For perhaps a second, all went black as the overwhelming, choking din of the bells took her over. It was as if the Lord had hurled back down to Earth each one of the dead child’s frail heartbeats, transformed into a crushing weight of iron that boomed and trembled, boomed and trembled, until the sky seemed like a gigantic heart about to break. Her mother had clapped her hands over her ears and moved closer to the wall as if looking for shelter. But the wall, too, broke, and the pavement cracked and sagged under their feet. Anna’s hand, from now on to be a helping hand , could not reach her. No hands could help. From that day, Anna Katschenka’s mother never went outside. She said that she dreaded the looks in people’s eyes. Perhaps more than their eyes, she dreaded those whispering voices that, even as she sat beneath the stone arches of the church, had begun to creep into her mind, every one of them murmuring that she had failed to save her daughter’s life. From then on, her child’s heart failure took shape and became a dominant presence during all her waking hours, just as being blind or paralysed can dominate someone’s life. It meant that every objection, every attempt to inject some uncertainty into the absolute truth of what the mother said about her dead child only served to make the illness stronger still, because it brought back memories of shame and guilt. Anna, from now on, was the one charged with preventing the chaos and disintegration in the outside world from getting through to her mother, and seeing to it that hermother heard only what was cheerful or encouraging, and nothing that maimed or tore apart. Day after day, Anna did her bit to create a provisional world order that was sound and harmonious, even though her mother had long since stopped believing in anything of the sort. One of her sayings used to be: the healthy don’t shun the light . This was one of her mother’s many incantatory phrases that Anna now made her own. To prove just how healthy and tough they all were, her father would sometimes spend an evening displaying his photos from the time when he was a sportsman. He had been a long- and medium-distance runner, and could be picked out in the group pictures from championships in strange cities as a tall, gangly young man standing among his teammates, all with their arms loosely draped across each other’s shoulders. The young sportsmen belonged to the Wiener Arbeiter Turn- und Sportverein and the banner above their heads read WAT Ottakring . As an older man, Anna’s father had
Whosoever doth not bear his own cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. So therefore whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.
She had told Doctor Jekelius of a memory of the funeral. Anna and her mother, who had been deeply affected by her daughter’s death, were leaving the church together, walking arm in arm. Above them the mighty church bells had swung and hammered and banged incessantly with their massive brass clappers. She used to say that the bells had called her into service, but at heart she knew that nothing so uplifting had taken place. It had been a dreadful moment. For perhaps a second, all went black as the overwhelming, choking din of the bells took her over. It was as if the Lord had hurled back down to Earth each one of the dead child’s frail heartbeats, transformed into a crushing weight of iron that boomed and trembled, boomed and trembled, until the sky seemed like a gigantic heart about to break. Her mother had clapped her hands over her ears and moved closer to the wall as if looking for shelter. But the wall, too, broke, and the pavement cracked and sagged under their feet. Anna’s hand, from now on to be a helping hand , could not reach her. No hands could help. From that day, Anna Katschenka’s mother never went outside. She said that she dreaded the looks in people’s eyes. Perhaps more than their eyes, she dreaded those whispering voices that, even as she sat beneath the stone arches of the church, had begun to creep into her mind, every one of them murmuring that she had failed to save her daughter’s life. From then on, her child’s heart failure took shape and became a dominant presence during all her waking hours, just as being blind or paralysed can dominate someone’s life. It meant that every objection, every attempt to inject some uncertainty into the absolute truth of what the mother said about her dead child only served to make the illness stronger still, because it brought back memories of shame and guilt. Anna, from now on, was the one charged with preventing the chaos and disintegration in the outside world from getting through to her mother, and seeing to it that hermother heard only what was cheerful or encouraging, and nothing that maimed or tore apart. Day after day, Anna did her bit to create a provisional world order that was sound and harmonious, even though her mother had long since stopped believing in anything of the sort. One of her sayings used to be: the healthy don’t shun the light . This was one of her mother’s many incantatory phrases that Anna now made her own. To prove just how healthy and tough they all were, her father would sometimes spend an evening displaying his photos from the time when he was a sportsman. He had been a long- and medium-distance runner, and could be picked out in the group pictures from championships in strange cities as a tall, gangly young man standing among his teammates, all with their arms loosely draped across each other’s shoulders. The young sportsmen belonged to the Wiener Arbeiter Turn- und Sportverein and the banner above their heads read WAT Ottakring . As an older man, Anna’s father had
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