Holy St. Mary Magdalene,
pray for them!
Holy St. Catherine,
pray for them!
Holy St. Barbara,
pray for them!
All ye blessed virgins and widows,
pray for them!
All ye saints of God,
pray for them!
Be merciful unto them! Spare them, O Lord!
Be merciful unto them! Deliver them, O Lord!
Babette Kirchmeier, civil servant’s widow, age 86
Marie, ah yes, Marie.
She was my household help, yes. Well, until I went into the old folks’ home.
That’s right, my household help, Marie was. She was a good girl. A real good girl. Always did everything so neat and nice. Not like the young things now, gadding around the whole time, flirting with boys.
No, Marie wasn’t like that. A good girl, Marie was.
Not all that pretty, but good and hardworking. She kept the whole place going for me.
I’m not so good on my legs anymore, you see, that’s why I’m in the home.
I don’t have any children, and my husband died nearly fifteen years ago. It’ll be fifteen years in June, on the twenty-fourth.
Ottmar, now, he was a good man. A good man.
So Marie came to help me in the house because my legs didn’t work so well anymore. Ah, my legs,
it’s a long time since they worked well. When you get old there’s a lot that doesn’t work as well as it used to, not just your legs. Growing old is no fun, you take my word for it, that’s what my mother always said. No, it’s no fun.
Once upon a time I could run like the wind. I was always going dancing with my Ottmar, God rest his soul. To the tea dance in the Odeon on Sunday afternoons. That was back before the war. Ottmar was a good dancer. We got to know each other at a dance, still in the Kaiser’s time, that was. Oh, he was a dashing fellow, my Ottmar, in his uniform. Ottmar was in the army then; he’s been dead nearly fifteen years now.
Time passes by, time passes by. I had that trouble with my hip. We’re not getting any younger, are we?
That’s when Marie came to help me in the house. She slept in the little bedroom. She didn’t ask for much, not Marie. A bed, a chair, a table, and a cupboard, that’s all she needed.
So in January, let me think now, yes, it was January when I went into the old folks’ home, because I don’t walk so well these days. Not so well at all. Yes, that’s when Marie went to her sister’s.
I didn’t know if she has a job as a maid now. But that would just suit Marie. A good hard worker. Didn’t talk much. That suited me fine, because I can’t handle those talkative young things. Chatter, chatter, chatter all day long, while the house goes to rack and ruin.
Yes, Marie was my household help, that’s right. Well, until I went into the old folks’ home. It was January I went into the old folks’ home. A good honest household help, Marie was. A real good girl. Ever so good, she was. Always did everything so neat and nice.
I think I’m getting tired. I fancy a nap now. A person needs a lot of sleep when she gets old, you know. Many old folk can’t sleep, but me, I need a lot of sleep. I always did like my sleep.
Oh, now what was it you were asking me? I’ve quite forgotten, dear me, it’s old age, you know. You were asking me about Marie. Yes, yes, Marie. She was a good girl, Marie was, willing and hardworking.
What’s she doing these days?
Isn’t she at her sister’s?
Oh, I’m so tired, I really fancy a nap now. You know, when a person gets old she needs her sleep.
W
inter refuses to give way to spring this year. It is much colder than usual this season. There’s been alternating rain and snow since early March. The gray of the morning mists lingers all day.
At last, on Friday morning, it clears slightly. The dark, gray-black clouds lift a little. Now and then the cloud cover breaks entirely, and the first rays of the spring sun shine tentatively through.
At midday, however, the sky grows dark again, and in the afternoon rain begins once more. It is so gloomy that you might think the day was already coming to an end, and night was falling.
Two figures, clad entirely in black, are on the move in this dim light. They are making for the only farm anywhere near. One of them is pushing a bicycle, the other carries a backpack. The farmer, who has just left the house to go to the sheds and stables, prudently lets his dog off its leash. Only when the two figures have almost reached the farm does he see that they are both women.
He whistles the dog back and holds it firmly by the collar.
One of the two women, the one with the backpack, asks for directions. They’re looking for the Danner family’s farm in Tannöd, she says. They’ve lost their way in the poor light. Can he help them? Does he know how to get to the farm?
“Over there, beyond the last field, turn left into the woods and you can’t miss it,” he replies.
The two of them go on. The man puts his dog on its chain again and thinks no more about the couple.
Traudl Krieger, sister of Marie the maid, age 36
Early in the morning that Friday, I helped our Marie pack all her belongings. She didn’t have much, enough to fill a backpack and a bag, too, that’s all. No, it really wasn’t much.
I’d promised to go with her when she started her new job. She didn’t want to go out there alone, because she didn’t know the way. So I gave her my promise. Gave her my promise . . .
It was fine first thing in the morning. But it was midday before we started off at last. The weather was nothing special by then. My mother-in-law came to look after the kids while I was gone.
My husband, Erwin, was still at work. He has to be on the building site early, he’s a bricklayer. Never comes home until late on a Friday. Not that he has to work such long hours, no. But he gets his wages on Friday, and then he goes to the pub after work.
Usually he comes home late and drunk. That’s men for you; drinking in the pub they forget everything, wife, children, just about everything.
When we set off, Marie and me, it hadn’t begun raining yet. The weather was still reasonable. A lot of dark clouds in the sky, but on the whole the weather wasn’t that bad. We’d had nothing but rain and snow over the last few weeks.
I carried the backpack, and our Marie strapped her bag on the carrier of the bike. Now and then I helped her to push it.
I’d borrowed the bike and the backpack from my neighbor the miller’s wife. Erwin takes our own bike to work with him, and I didn’t want to walk the whole way back. I thought I’d get home quicker on a bike.
Frau Meier who keeps the shop, she told me just how to get there. She told me about the vacant position in the first place.
“Your sister Marie’s a good strong young woman. She can turn her hand to anything, and she’s not work-shy. Over at the Danner farm their maid’s walked out. They’re looking for a new one. Just the thing for your Marie.” That’s what she said.
Frau Meier in the shop always knows everything. People come from all around here to see her when a new maid’s wanted, or a farmhand, and they tell her all the news, too, who’s died, who’s had a baby. Even if you’re looking for someone to marry, you just have to go to her. She can get the right couple together. Then her husband is the go-between and fixes up the wedding.
Marie had been with us in our little place since January. She’s not demanding, well, you can’t be, not with us.
Our place has two bedrooms, one for the children and one for us. It has a kitchen that’s our living room, too, and its own bathroom, not one for the whole floor of a building where you have to stand in line and wait for the others to be finished.
The place is big enough for Erwin, our three children, and me, but with Marie as well space was very tight.
Marie was sleeping on the sofa in the kitchen living room. It wasn’t going to be forever, really not, just for the time being. That’s why I was so pleased about the job.
And after she came to us, our Marie was with my brother for three weeks. In February, that was. My brother has a little farm, just a smallholding. Our parents left it to him. My brother’s wife wasn’t well, so our Marie went to help out. Marie was a good girl, you see. A really good girl. She could work hard, oh yes, she could, and she liked to work, but she was a simple soul, too.
I mean, she was a little bit backward. Not mentally handicapped or anything, just a bit simple, and she was good natured.
When our sister-in-law was better, Marie came back to us. Marie never got on too well with our brother. He was always going on at her, she couldn’t do anything right, not for him. He’s been a grouch all his life, he won’t ever change.
I’m younger than Marie, that’s true, eight years younger, but to me our Marie was always the little sister I had to look after. When our mother died, I mothered Marie instead of the other way around. Our father died a long time ago, too, he died just after Mother. Consumption, that’s what the doctor said.
It’d be easy for anyone who wanted to take advantage of our Marie. She always did as she was told, she never asked questions. Like Mother always said, the easy-going are usually good at heart, too.
Well, Marie wasn’t so much easy going, but she was far too good at heart. She’d have worked for no wages, just for board and lodging. That was our Marie. Poor creature.
Up till New Year, our Marie had a job with Frau Kirchmeier. Babette Kirchmeier. Frau Kirchmeier was a widow, and Marie kept house for her as best she could. But Frau Kirchmeier had been going downhill fast. In the end she could hardly walk, and she was getting a bit confused. So then she went into the old folks’ home; she’s got no children who could have taken her in, poor Frau Kirchmeier. So our Marie lost her job.
And like I said, I’d promised Marie to go to the Danner farm with her.
From what Frau Meier told me, it should have taken us an hour and a half to get there, but the weather was getting worse and worse.
It turned really dark, and a squally wind was blowing. I keep on thinking we never ought to
have gone, not in that weather. Then everything would be different now.
Well, we left our place around two, and by three-thirty or so we were hopelessly lost. So we wandered around for a while. Then we went back again a little way to the last farm we’d passed.
When we got there we asked our way.
Last field on the left, take the path through the woods, you can’t miss it, the man said.
And it started raining again in the woods, so when we finally reached the farm we were sopping wet. It’s a very isolated place, you know. I’d never have thought it was so far out in the country. If I’d known I’d never have let our Marie go there. Never. Out there in Tannöd, there was only the old lady at home, she opened the door to us. I didn’t see anyone else. Only the old lady and the little boy.
A pretty child, two years old, I’d say, with lovely golden curls.
Marie took to the child on sight, I could see that, our Marie likes kids. But the old lady was very odd, she looked at us so suspiciously. Hardly passed the time of day. We hung our wet jackets over a chair. Close to the stove to dry. Old Frau Danner never said a word all the time. I tried to get her talking. I mean, there’s questions to be asked when someone new comes to a farm. But no, we couldn’t get anywhere with her, though the little boy was already laughing and clinging to Marie’s skirt after five minutes.
And our Marie was laughing with him.
The kitchen was just like the farmyard, old and gloomy, and a little bit grubby too. The old lady was wearing an apron that could have done with a good wash. And the little boy’s face was dirty.
I sat there with my sister Marie on the bench by the tiled stove for an hour, and in all that time old Frau Danner said maybe five sentences. Strange, surly folk, I said to myself.
At the end of an hour I put on my jacket, didn’t want to go home in the dark. The jacket was nearly dry by this time and I wanted to set off straight away.
“I’ll have to go home now, it’s getting dark. I don’t want to lose my way again,” I told Marie.
Then I met old Frau Danner’s daughter on the doorstep.
Right there in the doorway.
We had a word or so, she was a bit friendlier than the old lady, and then I went out the door. Our Marie came with me. I pushed the bike through the garden gate and said good-bye to her at the fence. She didn’t look all that happy, I think she’d rather have gone back home with me. I could see how she felt, but what could I do? There was nothing else for it.
It almost broke my heart. I just wanted to get away from there quick. I told our Marie, “I hope you like it. If not we’ll find you something else.”
Marie only said, “Oh, I’ll be fine.”
I ought to have just taken her away with me. Something else would have come up. I’m certain
it would. But I turned away and rode off on the bike. When our Marie called to me again I stopped and got off the bike.
Our Marie ran after me and gave me a big hug. Squeezed me tight. As if she never wanted to let go. I really had to tear myself away and get on the bike in a hurry.
I pedaled away like mad. I didn’t want to stop again.
The house, the farm, no, I wouldn’t even want to be buried there, I said to myself. It shook me, that place did.
How can anyone stand it out there with those people? Poor Marie, how would she be able to stand it? I was so upset, my chest felt tight, but what else was I to do? Marie couldn’t sleep on our sofa anymore, and Erwin was tired of it all, too; he’d wanted to be rid of her long ago. I pedaled and pedaled. I didn’t stop. I just wanted to get away, right away!
I wanted to get away from my guilty conscience as well.
After a while there was water running down my cheeks. I thought at first it was because the cycling made me sweat so much. But then I realized it was tears.
M
arie goes to her room next to the kitchen straight after supper.
It is a small room. A bed, a table, a chest of drawers, and a chair, there’s no space for anything else.
The washbasin and jug stand on the chest of drawers.
A small window opposite the door. If she goes to the window, which way will she be looking? Maybe toward the woods? She’ll know in the morning. Marie would like to see the woods from her window.
The windowsill is covered with dust. So is the table, so is the chest of drawers. The room has been standing empty for some time. The air is stale and musty. Marie doesn’t mind.
She opens the drawer in the table. There’s an old newspaper cutting inside, yellow with age. And a pillowcase button and the metal screwtop of a preserving jar. Marie closes the drawer again.
The bed stands to her right. A simple brown wooden bed frame. The quilt has a blue-and-white cover, and so does the pillow.
Sighing, Marie sits down on her bed. She stays there for a while, looking around her room.
Giving her thoughts free rein.
She misses Traudl and the children. But it’s nicer sleeping in a bed than on the sofa, and she won’t have to see Erwin for a while now either.
Erwin didn’t like her, Marie sensed that as soon as she moved to Traudl’s place at New Year. It was the way he came through the door, no greeting, no handshake, nothing. He just asked Traudl, “What’s she doing here, then?” And he jerked his head Marie’s way without even looking at her.
“She’ll be staying with us until she finds a new job.” That was all Traudl said.
“I don’t like other folk living off of me,” was all he said in return.
She, Marie, acted as if she hadn’t heard him say that. But it hurt, because Erwin is such an oaf. She’s never told her sister so, but she’s thought it all the same.
He thought she was “stupid,” and “simple,” “mental,” “not quite right in the head,” she’s heard him say all those things and more, too, but she’s never protested. Because of Traudl and because of the children.
Thank God there are children here on this farm, too, thinks Marie.
She gets along well with children. She once found a motto on a page in a calendar saying, “Children are the salt of the earth.” She took note of that. She likes those old calendar mottos, and when she meets an especially nice child she takes out the page from the calendar and reads the old saying over and over again.
Marie sighs, gets off the bed, starts putting her things away in the chest of drawers. Begins settling into her room. She stops again and again. Sits down on her bed. Her arms keep dropping to her lap, limp, heavy as lead. She keeps thinking back to the past. Thinks of Frau Kirchmeier and how much she liked working for the old lady. Even if she was getting more and more peculiar.
Thinks of her brother Ott. He was the same sort as Erwin. You had to watch out with him. She’d been helping at his home a few weeks back when his wife was doing so poorly. She was glad to get away again.
She pulls herself together. No use sitting around all the time thinking about life, Marie tells herself. She must finish settling in and go to sleep, so that she can get up early in the morning. She’s wasted enough time already.
She carefully goes on putting her possessions away. Keeps daydreaming, her thoughts stray all the time, she thinks of that first meal with her new employers.
The farmer, a big, strong man, silent. Didn’t say much all through supper. He just gave her a brief good evening when he came in. A firm handshake, a glance sizing her up, that was all.
His wife, very silent, too. Older than her husband. Careworn, tight-lipped. It was the wife who said grace.
The daughter, now, she was nice to Marie. Asked if she had other brothers and sisters besides Traudl, asked about any nieces and nephews, what their names were and how old.
I could get along all right with her, thinks Marie.
And then the children . . .
The children in this house were nice. Nice kids, especially the little boy. He smiled at her straight away. He kept wanting to play. She joked with him. Took him on her knee and played “rocking horse,” the way she always did with her sister’s
children. Let him slide off her lap with a bump. The little boy had gurgled with laughter.
When their mother sent the children to bed, Marie rose to her feet, too.
“I’ll go to my room now,” she said, “I have to put my things away. Then I can start work first thing in the morning.”
She wished them all goodnight and went to her room.
But she’s planning to stay at this farm only until she finds something better, she knows that now. Although the children are nice, and the farmer’s daughter is someone she could get along with. The farm is too far out in the country; she’d like to be closer to Traudl.
Marie has almost finished tidying her things away. Just the backpack to unpack now.
Outside, the weather is even worse. The wind is blowing harder and harder, a stormy wind.
I hope our Traudl got home all right, she thinks.
The window doesn’t fit particularly well, the wind blows through the cracks in the frame. Marie feels a draft. She turns to the door. It is standing slightly ajar, and Marie goes to close it. Then she sees the door slowly opening wider and wider, creaking. She stares with incredulous amazement at the widening gap.
Marie can’t make up her mind what to do. She just stands there, rooted to the spot. Eyes turned toward the door. Until she is felled to the ground without a word, without a sound, by the sheer force of the blow.