into a Carmelite nunnery. On her departure she clasped Anna passionately to her and kissed her tenderly on the forehead. Nervously she fished a curled photograph of Leon out of the black handbag that she would have to relinquish at the convent gate and pushed it into Anna’s hand.
Her departure fired the starting shot for a series of radical changes. Nettchen was returned to the church. The grandfather, whose all-seeing eye had maintained symbolic control to his final days, exchanged his earthly existence for immortality. He was buried in a snowy churchyard next to his wife, who had departed fifteen years earlier.
Back on the farm Uncle Heinrich rested a hand on Anna’s shoulder. ‘So, Anna, now there’s only the two of us and the stock. And you and I are no farmers at all. Come, let’s get down to work.’ The heroic acceptance of this lot reminded Anna of her father, who had reconciled himself to his illness in the same way. In an empty gesture she clutched him by his funeral coat. When he dies too, she thought, I’ll really be alone.
4
‘I wrote you dozens of letters,’ Lotte sighed. ‘I lay in my garden house and wrote. My mother had bought special writing paper for me with violets in the top left corner. All my letters ended with, “Dear Anna, Why don’t you write back? When will we see each other again?”’
‘They must have intercepted all those letters and thrown them away – after they had read them out of their farmers’ curiosity. And there I was thinking you had forgotten me.’
Their eyes strayed to the other tables. Both were silent. Here they sat, almost seventy years later, and they still felt taken in and deceived; they did not know what they ought to do with these feelings. Had the lives of all these ladies here, with their silk blouses, their gold earrings, their carefully painted lips, also gone awry through such misunderstandings? Anna began to laugh sarcastically.
‘Why are you laughing?’ said Lotte suspiciously.
‘Because my indignation has lost nothing of its strength, after all these years.’ Anna drummed her fingers on the table. She remembered she had decided one day that Lotte had died from the illness she was meant to have recovered from in Holland. Nobody had thought to send her an announcement of the death. Perhaps her grandfather had indeed received it, but kept quiet about it so as not to upset her. She had made Lotte dead like that because a dead Lotte was more bearable than one who had simply forgotten her. Moreover, dying ran in the family.
‘It’s like a book,’ said Lotte. Time was rustling past her. Still she could hear her mother, talking about Anna and saying compassionately , ‘The poor child, landing up with such barbarians.’ Thisdescription, which she had taken over gratuitously from her German mother-in-law, made Anna’s fate became more and more puzzling. Was Anna herself a barbarian too now? Didn’t barbarians have any writing paper? She invented all sorts of excuses for Anna in this way, in order not to have to live with the thought that Anna was simply not allowing her to hear from her at all.
Between Uncle Heinrich and the delicate, blonde daughter of a gentleman farmer, strict unwritten laws stood in the way that were best expressed as statistics: the quantity of livestock, the number of servants, acres of land. With Martha Höhnekop, who was her opposite in every way, he was trying to rid himself of his chosen one. He met Martha at the shooting match. In mutiny against the terror of rank and position, and capital, he had allowed his eyes to fall on someone who had nothing to lose. She was the eldest of a family of fourteen children. Her father ran a café that everyone with a dash of self-respect avoided. But Uncle Heinrich was drunk and Martha Höhnekop available.
One day she walked into Anna’s life. With big, rough strides that contrasted coarsely with the cream-coloured lace on her wedding dress, she entered the stuffy living-room,
Her departure fired the starting shot for a series of radical changes. Nettchen was returned to the church. The grandfather, whose all-seeing eye had maintained symbolic control to his final days, exchanged his earthly existence for immortality. He was buried in a snowy churchyard next to his wife, who had departed fifteen years earlier.
Back on the farm Uncle Heinrich rested a hand on Anna’s shoulder. ‘So, Anna, now there’s only the two of us and the stock. And you and I are no farmers at all. Come, let’s get down to work.’ The heroic acceptance of this lot reminded Anna of her father, who had reconciled himself to his illness in the same way. In an empty gesture she clutched him by his funeral coat. When he dies too, she thought, I’ll really be alone.
4
‘I wrote you dozens of letters,’ Lotte sighed. ‘I lay in my garden house and wrote. My mother had bought special writing paper for me with violets in the top left corner. All my letters ended with, “Dear Anna, Why don’t you write back? When will we see each other again?”’
‘They must have intercepted all those letters and thrown them away – after they had read them out of their farmers’ curiosity. And there I was thinking you had forgotten me.’
Their eyes strayed to the other tables. Both were silent. Here they sat, almost seventy years later, and they still felt taken in and deceived; they did not know what they ought to do with these feelings. Had the lives of all these ladies here, with their silk blouses, their gold earrings, their carefully painted lips, also gone awry through such misunderstandings? Anna began to laugh sarcastically.
‘Why are you laughing?’ said Lotte suspiciously.
‘Because my indignation has lost nothing of its strength, after all these years.’ Anna drummed her fingers on the table. She remembered she had decided one day that Lotte had died from the illness she was meant to have recovered from in Holland. Nobody had thought to send her an announcement of the death. Perhaps her grandfather had indeed received it, but kept quiet about it so as not to upset her. She had made Lotte dead like that because a dead Lotte was more bearable than one who had simply forgotten her. Moreover, dying ran in the family.
‘It’s like a book,’ said Lotte. Time was rustling past her. Still she could hear her mother, talking about Anna and saying compassionately , ‘The poor child, landing up with such barbarians.’ Thisdescription, which she had taken over gratuitously from her German mother-in-law, made Anna’s fate became more and more puzzling. Was Anna herself a barbarian too now? Didn’t barbarians have any writing paper? She invented all sorts of excuses for Anna in this way, in order not to have to live with the thought that Anna was simply not allowing her to hear from her at all.
Between Uncle Heinrich and the delicate, blonde daughter of a gentleman farmer, strict unwritten laws stood in the way that were best expressed as statistics: the quantity of livestock, the number of servants, acres of land. With Martha Höhnekop, who was her opposite in every way, he was trying to rid himself of his chosen one. He met Martha at the shooting match. In mutiny against the terror of rank and position, and capital, he had allowed his eyes to fall on someone who had nothing to lose. She was the eldest of a family of fourteen children. Her father ran a café that everyone with a dash of self-respect avoided. But Uncle Heinrich was drunk and Martha Höhnekop available.
One day she walked into Anna’s life. With big, rough strides that contrasted coarsely with the cream-coloured lace on her wedding dress, she entered the stuffy living-room,
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