The blind side of the heart - By Julia Franck Page 0,131

advances?

People are beginning to go away, leave Germany. Fanny’s friend Lucinde is going to England with her husband, said Helene.

Well, as for those who don’t love their forests and their Mother Earth in Germany, they’re welcome to turn their backs on their native land. Let them go, say I. Let them all go. We have work to do here, Helene. We will save the German nation, our fatherland and our mother tongue. Wilhelm rolled up his sleeves. We don’t deserve to perish. We’ll do it with these hands, do you see? No German may fold his hands in his lap these days. Indulging in despair and complaint is not our way. You will be my wife and I’ll give you my name.

Helene shook her head.

You hesitate? Don’t tell me you’d rather give up, Alice, don’t tell me that. He looked at her sternly, incredulously.

Wilhelm, I don’t deserve your love, I have nothing to give in return.

That will come, Alice, I’m sure of it. Wilhelm said this in a clear, frank voice, as if only her agreement were at stake, a decision that would unite them. Nothing in what she said seemed to hurt his feelings or shake his confidence in the slightest. His will would conquer, his will alone. Did she have no strong will of her own? Of course it takes a woman a certain time to get over a loss like yours, he said. You were going to get married, you and that boy. But it’s years ago; you must end your mourning some time, Alice.

Helene heard Wilhelm’s words, which seemed to her both stupid and bold. He was talking away at her. His air of superiority, the commanding tone of what he said, made her indignant. There were words that cancelled each other out. Helene felt that there was something suspect about his heroic courage, something fundamentally wrong. Next moment Helene was horrified by herself. Was she resentful? Wilhelm was cheerful, she’d be able to learn from him. Helene regretted her annoyance and her rejection of him. Wasn’t it just her grief for Carl, a woman’s mourning, as Wilhelm so kindly called it, that made her find it so hard to bear Wilhelm’s own cheerfulness and enjoyment of life?

What are you thinking of, Alice? The future’s at our feet, we won’t think just of ourselves, we’ll think of the common good, Alice, of the people, of our German land.

She wouldn’t be faint-hearted or bitter. It wasn’t life that had injured her feelings, there was no God wanting to make her atone. Wilhelm meant well by her and by himself, and she couldn’t grudge him that. How could she be so arrogant? After all, what he said was true, she had to come back to life, maybe nursing the sick didn’t help much there. But she lacked any real idea of what life should and could be. She would have to turn to someone else for that. And why not someone who meant well by her, who would be happy to hear her say yes, who wanted to rescue her? Wilhelm obviously knew what he wished for, what he preferred, and he was not just close to belief, he did believe. The word Germany was like a clarion call in his mouth. We. Who were we? We were someone, but exactly who were we? She was sure she could learn to kiss again, and above all to come to know and like someone else’s odour, to open her lips and feel his tongue in her mouth, perhaps that was what it was all about.

Wilhelm paid court to Helene assiduously. It seemed as if every rejection by her simply lent him new force. He felt born to great deeds, most of all he wanted to rescue people and the first thing he wanted was to win this woman, whom he saw as shy and charming, to live with him as his wife.

I have two tickets for the Kroll Opera, we owe them to my good connections. You’d like to see those first television pictures, wouldn’t you?

But Helene was not to be won over. She was on night duty almost the whole week and there was no getting around it.

When Martha brought the news that Mariechen had been unable to prevent an incident in which the police had picked up and taken away a woman in the Kornmarkt who was first weeping and then raving wildly, Helene felt anxious. Leontine telephoned Bautzen, first speaking to Mariechen, then to the hospital