I Confess (28 page)

"Everything's ready," he told me. "Well go to Munich by car."

"Whose car?"

"Mine. I drove to Vienna.*'

He elaborated further. It was his intention to drive me as far as Salzburg. There I was to get out and cross the German border by train, from Salzburg to Freilassing where he and Yolanda would be waiting for me. "I don't want to risk being seen with you," he explained, "just in case they arrest you at customs."

"Why should they arrest me? I'U be traveling with false papers."

"There could be a warrant at the border with a description of you."

I could see his point.

"That's why Yolanda will travel with me as my wife. With her old papers. If anything happens, we don't know. each other. If all goes well, we'll meet again an hour later in Freilassing."

"And if I don't turn up?"

He smiled. "Then, Mr. Qiandler, you've either been arrested or tried to escape. If you've been arrested, everything is in order, and I won't hold it against you. If you've tried to escape, the border guard gets an anonymous phone call that you are somewhere around, who you are, what you look like and a description of your papers. You won't get far."

"No," I said, trying to think all the while whether I really had no chance of getting far. "And on the way back?"

"On the way back you can do whatever you Uke. YouTl be alone. I'm not returning to Austria."

"And Yolanda?"

"Yolanda stays with me."

Strangely enough, it was these last words of his that influenced Yolanda and myself, independently of each other, to a series of ideas which in the end cost Mordstein his life. We acted from quite different motives. My main impetus was financial as well as fears for my personal safety. K he really succeeded in getting hold of both money packages, then I was penniless except for the first installment. And even of that I couldn't be certain. He might still betray me one of these days, if only out of jealousy. One couldn't know what a man, who had obviously managed to maintain anything but a normal relationship with Yolanda, might do if roused. Besides, I hated Mordstein. This reason rated third place, but it was there. I hated him for the way he had held out on me with the morphine, and I also hated him—and this surprised me—because he seemed to have complete control over Yolanda, I hated him because she was, to all appearances, subservient to him. I would never have thought that Yolanda meant so much to me.

As for Yolanda, her motives for killing Mordstein were more complex. She tried to explain them to me during the days preceding our departure. Her relationship to me had changed since Mordstein had appeared on the scene. Now she treated me rather as if I were a psychiatrist to whom she could tell the worst and most secret things without a trace of shame. During those days one might say I was Yolanda's soul-doctor. She needed someone to whom she could unburden herself after the many years of silence. I already knew, roughly, the worst of all she had wanted to spare me—now I found out the details.

She came from a wealthy, upper-middleclass family.

Her father had been a Rhineland industrialist, her mother came from a less wealthy but impeccable country gentry set. Yolanda's early childhood had been orderiy, under the supervision of a French bonne. Her father was away a great deal on business trips, her mother was the extremely popular central figure of an active social life. In the morning Yolanda would be brought in to see her as she breakfasted, in the evening she came in to kiss Yolanda goodnight. She often had on shiny dresses and smelled deliciously of expensive perfume. Yolanda kissed her with a feeling of jealousy and the assurance that she had the most beautiful mother in the world. At the age of six she was sent to boarding school.

It was an expensive, exemplary institution. All the students, without exception, came from wealthy homes. The school was run by Ursuline nuns. The girls wore uniforms, slept in large dormitories and were allowed in the huge park that surrounded the buildings only in the company of an adult or in groups.

At first Yolanda was very unhappy. She missed her bonne terribly, she was lonely and felt abandoned. The girls in her class were aloof. At night they whispered to each other, Yolanda couldn't understand what they were saying and felt excluded. During the daily walks she walked alone, always last, while the others marched gaily pn ahead, arm in arm.

This was the reason why she soon felt drawn to Sister Benvenuta who taught rehgion. Sister Benvenuta was friendly, gentle and rosy-cheeked. She spoke with a muted, soothing voice about Jesus Christ and his sufferings on earth, and to Yolanda it seemed as if the nun must have known the Savior personally. She talked about his life with such sincerity, it moved you to tears and almost broke your heart. Yolanda listened to her, spellbound. These were her first hours of peaceful joy in the new, inimical world into which she had been cast. She awoke every morning with a feeling of cautious anxiety over this new happiness and looked upon everyone who

threatened to disturb it with hatred and enmity. Because of Sister Benvenuta and her so obvious love for Jesus Christ, Yolanda provoked a murderous fight with a fat, forward girl called Maud.

Maud, with her sharp eyes and even sharper tongue, was the bad girl of the class. Wherever she turned up, there was trouble. She had the worst marks and practically always had to stay after school. In Sister Benven-uta's class her behavior was shameless. She chattered and giggled and was the disturbing focal point of a steadily growing opposition. Several times Yolanda challenged her about her behavior and exhorted her to behave herself.

"My, but you're dumb!" Maud said cynically. "You don't really beheve the nonsense Benni tells us." She always called Sister Benvenuta "Benni."

"It is not nonsense! It's the truth!"

Maud laughed. "Oh yes? Benni's lying! Easter rabbit! Santa Claus. The Christ child . . . nonsense! Every bit of it. When you're older, you'll find out. I could tell you quite different things."

"I don't want to hear different things." Yolanda's voice sounded strangely harsh, even to her. "But let me tell you one thing—if you act up again in her class, you'll be sorry!"

"Are you planning anything?"

"Yes I am."

And Maud laughed.

In the next rehgion class she did her best to be her worst. After class Yolanda fell upon her and began to beat her up. Maud put up a good fight. The other girls stood around in a circle and watched Yolanda and Maud rolling around on the smoothly waxed floor of the classroom, tearing each other's hair, kicking, scratching, spitting. It was an impressive fight and it didn't end until Sister Benvenuta came back, attracted by the noise in the classroom.

Sister Benvenuta, already irritated by Maud's behavior during class, asked sharply—her rosy face dark with an-

ger—what the fight had been about. Maud was sUent. The other girls were silent. Yolanda, pleased with the role of someone who accepts punishment and suffers for a beloved, also had nothing to say. Her head high, and with a deep feeUng of satisfaction, she Ustened to Sister Ben-venuta say that both she and Maud were to be punished. Maud was not to leave her room the following Sunday when there was to be an outing; Yolanda was given the task of decorating the school's small chapel with fresh flowers. Sister Benvenuta didn't know that she was giving Yolanda a punishment that delighted her. She knew nothing of Yolanda's attachment to her, of the love she was suppressing, that at night, in her bed, Yolanda was congratulating herself on the good fortune that had come to her at last—she was to decorate the altar on which stood a statue of the Savior; she would bring flowers to the man whom her beloved teacher worshiped and with whom she quite evidently had a deep, inner relationship.

With a feeling of joy Yolanda saw the other girls leaving on the following Sunday. She went to work at once. She poUshed the brass on the altar until it gleamed like gold, then she gathered the most beautiful flowers she could find in the flower garden. She worked for hours, until she was hot, her cheeks fiery red and beads of perspiration had formed on her forehead. When she was done, she breathed a deep sigh of joyful reUef and the altar was bright with brass and flowers.

Yolanda stepped back. The white Savior was stretching out his hands to her as if in blessing and his eyes looked into hers so lovingly, Yolanda's senses were aroused. She could feel the hot blood rushing to her head. She felt dizzy. And at that moment it came to her, hke an enlightenment—she wanted to kiss the Savior. She wanted to throw her arms around the cold stone and press it to her so that he, the silent miracle worker, the son of God, would know of her secret love of which even Sister Benvenuta knew nothing.

Then she couldn't think anymore, her body acted on its

own volition. In a paroxysm of hunger for love, for tenderness, she cUmbed onto the ahar, stepped on the white damask cloth with her little sandals and lifted her arms. In a motion of ultimate passion she threw them around the Savior's white body and closed her eyes. This was happiness, this was bliss!

Sister Benvenuta, who just at this moment entered the chapel, saw a scene that drove the blood of shame to her cheeks. To her the little girl's action seemed so depraved, so indescribably lascivious, that she tried to explain away her quite inadmissable reaction to her Mother Superior as a result of her momentary confusion. For Sister Benvenuta in* seconds overcame the sense of paralysis which had overwhelmed her at sight of Yolanda embracing the Savior and rushed forward. With one hand she wrenched Yolanda down from the altar, with the other she struck her a cruel blow in the face.

"You sinful child!" she cried in a trembling voice. "May God punish you for such blasphemy!"

22

Yolanda's father, hastily called in, settled the scandal with a few diplomatic words, his natural charm and a considerable financial contribution "for the poor." Yolanda was not expelled. There was a formal reconciliation between her and Sister Benvenuta, but it was Yolanda's father who treated the whole matter in a way that left her profoundly unhappy. To the end she tried to explain to him that she hadn't meant to do anything bad, on the contrary, her intentions had been sacred. He thought her violent efforts to make him understand what she had done were intended

to reassure him and laughed at her. The whole incident didn't worry him in the sUghtest. All "the little white sisters" were, * according to him, hysterical and unpredictable, and little girls had to be naughty sometimes. That was perfectly natural. And anyway, Yolanda had promised never to do it again. Two weeks later he was making a joke of it at his club. "Just imagine, there she goes, the Uttle thing, climbing up the altar to smooch with the Savior! Wild! Cost me five hundred marks, hahaha! Waiter^ another whiskey."

But as far as his visit was concerned, his daughter's assurances soon bored him. He looked at his watch. His plane for Diisseldorf left in an hour; he had to hurry. "My child, of course I understand you. Everything's all right. You be a good girl now, and you've promised me you will be, haven't you?"

"Yes, Papa." (You don't understand a thing. Who are you anj^way? I don't know you. You're a stranger.) "Give Mama my love." (Another stranger. Where is she anyway? On the Riviera. Where is the Riviera? I don't know. Only that it's far away. Why isn't she here? Why do they leave me alone all the time?)

"So goodbye, darUng." Father and daughter had reached his parked car. He gave her a fleeting kiss, the chauffeur saluted with a touch of irony, Yolanda nodded absent-mindedly, the car drove away. Nothing left but a cloud of dust.

Yolanda began to walk back to the school building along the gravel path, her shoulders sagging. Suddenly she was startled by a girl who jumped out at her from the shrubbery. It was Maud. She was smiling. "Nice car," she said.

Yolanda nodded. They walked on together, side by side.

"Nice guy ... your father."

Silence.

"The way he fixed things ... with that dumb Dora."

^'What dumb Dora?"

"Benni. Who else? Or isn't she a dumb Dora?"

"Oh sure," said Yolanda. (The white Savior floated away.)

"Well, you've finally wised up."

Yolanda nodded. Maud laid an arm around her shoulders. "I don't think you're so dumb," she said. "Want to go swimming?"

Yolanda stopped dead. As if awakening, she stared at Maud. "What's the matter?" the latter asked curiously.

"Nothing," said Yolanda. "Let's go swimming."

It was the beginning of a long friendship. It was also the end of Sister Benvenuta, the end of love of the Savior, the end of an era. And the beginning of a new one. Because under Maud's influence, Yolanda changed. To all outer appearances she remained the same: quiet, well behaved, reserved. But inwardly, in the months that followed, she adopted Maud's viewpoint, gained from what that girl had experienced. They were together day and night, their friendship became proverbial. It was an uneven friendship—Maud was the one who gave, Yolanda the one who received. And everything she received from Maud was not advantageous to her development although she accepted it without criticism': first intimations of the facts of life, the shattering of the stork legend, bits of pornographic novels copied on a typewriter with a lot of mistakes, pornographic pictures, the whispered secrets of early puberty.